I shared this astonishing fact a little while ago on our Beeketing Blog: 69.23% of WooCommerce shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes an order. The huge number like that is exactly why online store owners need to recover WooCommerce abandoned carts in every possible way. The question is: Where-and-how do we start?
I knew you’d be lost in the weeds with how to do it. So I’m going to put together a list of on-page and off-page tactics + tutorials of WooCommerce plugins you need to recover the shopping cart abandonment.
On-page tactics: Convert shoppers before they leave your door
Tactic #1: Keep the cart notification noticeable
Based on an infographic by KISSmetrics, 24% of people who abandon their shopping cart want to save their items for future consideration.
So, if you want to have them come back and complete purchasing, it is really important to keep the cart noticeable. Otherwise, it will be out of sight and out of mind.
This could be something as simple as making the cart icon on the right corner bigger and catchier with the number of items inside the cart in hot red color. See how Amazon does it right:
How you can do this:
Simply use the plugin called WooCommerce Menu Cart. It helps display a customized shopping cart icon with the number of items added and total cost in your navigation bar. It looks like this:
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I even have a smarter way…
Don’t want to use a plugin and enjoy playing with codes?
I’m going to share the code extracted from the WooCommerce Menu Cart plugin here. It functions exactly like the plugin mentioned above. Simply add this code into your theme’s functions.php and you’re ready to go.
For more customized options, take a look at this article.
Tactic #2: Implement the exit-intent popup
“I can find it cheaper somewhere else.”
This is the most frequently objection that online shoppers usually have when they’re on the fence about buying something.
And good news is – it’s also one of the easiest objections to overcome when you can offer them a discount code if they have intend to leave your site. This is where exit-intent popup comes in.
Exit-intent popups work by examining online shoppers’ mouse movements and detecting when they are about to leave. It then sends a popup message that encourages them to stay by offering a deal or presenting more information.
How you can do this
Download Beeketing for WooCommerce plugin then activate the built-in Checkout Boost app inside. Checkout Boost will help you:
- Run exit-intent incentive offer to target WooCommerce cart abandoning visitors, encourage them to finish checkout to get rewards
- Add a countdown timer to create a sense of urgency for your incentive offer: urge customers to take the offer before time runs out
For example, let’s look at how one Beeketing clients uses the exit-intent offer to recover WooCommerce abandoned carts on their site:
A discount code + the sense of urgency = the last nudge you need to make your customer complete their purchase
Here’s how they use Checkout Boost to create a countdown offer that convert at 39%:
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Takeaway: Beeketing is a marketing platform that provides 10+ marketing & sales extensions for WooCommerce, such as upselling & cross-selling, product recommendations, email marketing, sales & stock countdown, etc. Learn more about Beeketing for WooCommerce.
Tactic #3: Enable guest checkout on WooCommerce
“Are you new here or a returning customer?” (log in or create a new account?)
A lot of checkout processes start with this redundant question. It’s not a good idea to require customers to create an account prior to checkout. In fact, Kissmetrics once pointed out that account creation is one of the most common factors that will “kill conversions”. This not only slows down the checkout process, but also makes customers bounce.
The reason is quite easy to understand: you’ve indirectly disconnected the potential customer with their initial goal – buying products on your store.
However, once you don’t require to create an account, you’ll lose a lot of data and potential opportunities to follow up with them later.
You can allow users to quickly order with the WooCommerce guest checkout, and ask them all the information used to create an account at the end, when their email, address, and phone number,…will be gathered for shipping. This will allow you to keep in touch with your customers and build a relationship with them for future orders.
How you can do this
Just check one box to enable guest checkout in the WooCommerce Dashboard:
And you’re done!
Tactic #4: Present trust signals/ social proofs
Trust is one of the most important factors in an online shopper’s purchase decision. Especially when they are on the fence about buying something.
When a shopper lands on your site, they don’t know whether your product is good or bad. However, you can earn their trust by adding various different types of social proof.
Wait…remember your customers are smarter than you think. Any attempts at trying to fool them can lead to side effects and loss of sales. So I put together here some clever ways that you can steal to leverage social proofs:
1. Customer reviews:
You should reach out to your happiest customers and ask them for a nice review that you can post on your site. Here’s the one I got after purchasing a tablet on Lazada:
How you can do this
Yotpo is the most suitable plugin will help you do this. This plugin will send a review request email to customers after each completed order, then display their reviews in a beautiful and customizable format on your site.
Big bonus of Yotpo social reviews:
- Create a minisite to increase your SEO with User Generated Content
- Allow customers to share their reviews on their social networks
- Import pre-existing reviews
- Fully customize your widget’s look and feel.
- Connect your store’s social pages to Yotpo, to automatically notify your followers of new reviews.
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2. Recent sales notification:
Probably the easiest way to add social proofs is by showing what other customers are buying on your site. This little sales hack is one of the must-have elements on every WooCommerce site from way back.
How you can do this
While most of WP plugins require a premium account to fully activate this feature, this one built for totally free: Sales Pop app in Beeketing for WooCommerce package.
Do you know how these live sales notifications are generated?
They built a system of algorithms that analyse all store’s sale data and customer behavior patterns (browsing, adding to cart, completing order…) to generate sales pop ups automatically. Besides, you also can create “fake” notifications to promote any items you want in the same dashboard.
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Off-page tactics: Keep shoppers coming back after they leave your door
Tactic #5: Send WooCommerce abandoned cart emails
Using abandoned cart emails is a big opportunity for store owners to recover lost revenue. According to SaleCycle, nearly half of all abandoned cart emails are clicked and over a third of clicks lead to a purchase back on site. The cart recovery email even has a higher open rate than other marketing emails.
Why? You need to know that 77.3% customers often abandon their carts without meaning to do so. For example, this might because the store crashed, because the process was complicated, or because they have to quit unexpectedly.
Here’s a quick example of a WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery email:
How you can do this:
For a flexible way to send WooCommerce abandoned cart emails, you can try MailBot by Beeketing:
Here’s why:
- It’s feature-rich. This plugin includes 10+ built-in campaigns and customer segments, drafted & scheduled weekly newsletters.
- It’s well-updated. At the time of writing this article, it was last updated…52 minutes ago.
- It’s more affordable than MailChimp. Starts from only $19/month.
Take a look at how MailBot by Beeketing can help you win back lost sales:
One huge bonus is that this plugin is super easy to use. You simply drag-and-drop element blocks to the position where you want to present them, then design will put it in place for you. If you’re familiar with codes, you can even change the template the way you want to make it feature your brand.
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Tactic #6: Set up web push notifications
When customers left your site, it’s crucial to reminding them of what they’ve left behind. Using web push notifications is another tactic that is more simple, more instant and more direct than the cart recovery email above. Because it increases the brand awareness of shoppers about your products – the same way ad retargeting does but of course, much cheaper and easier.
Push notification will send a reminder instantly to let them know they forget something on their cart. These notifications are clickable so they can bring them back to complete the purchases immediately.
How you can do this
There is no way to implement this in the basic setting of WooCommerce. So consider trying Push Notifications by PushAssist to improve customer retention for your online store. This plugin will do exactly what you need to set up the push notifications system and win back lost customers.
Wrap things up
I hope this list has helped you find some interesting ideas to recover WooCommerce abandoned carts that you might not have been aware of before.
There is only one thing you need to keep in mind that – whether you use many tactics or don’t do anything, the reality is that there’s no specific way that works better than the others. That’s because every WooCommerce store is different. So what worked on other sites may not work at all on yours.
But no matter what you do – don’t stop testing, measuring and analyzing. It’s the only way to know if the tactics you’re doing are helping or not.
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