Why do some customers abandon their cart?

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Hold on: 3 out of 4 users abandon the online purchase process before completing it. So many? Why? Well, for a variety of reasons:

Because you were not informed of the shipping costs/taxes until checkout .
The purchasing process is cumbersome/endless and they even ask for your dog's chip number.
Because there is a problem with the payment.
Among the payment methods, there is not one that suits the needs of the user in question.
The price is considerable and at the last minute he became afraid to spend his money.
Ultimately, a user can abandon their shopping cart for hundreds of reasons. Try not to give them any of them. To do this, try by all means to make the process easy and fast, requiring as little data as possible and, as I always say, not to give the user bad news at the time of checkout . In other words, if you have to give them information about shipping costs or taxes, it is better to give it to them before they put the products in the basket.

Strategies to recover abandoned carts
Something dies in the soul when a shopping cart is gone. Well, if you have done everything possible but you have not been able to make the user complete the purchase process, now… how do you get them back? Well, there are techniques for that. The best of all (and the most effective) is, without a doubt, the email chain to recover sales . Do you want to know how to carry it out? Well, take note.

What are abandoned cart emails?
These are emails aimed at getting users who have abandoned the purchase process to return to the e-commerce and complete their purchase. These emails have much higher opening and click rates than the general average for emails . If the normal rate for a typical email is for the opening rate to be around 15-25% and the click rate 3-4%, the opening rate for an abandoned cart email is around 40-50% and the click rate is 10-20%.

So yes: it is worth working on these emails to recover lost sales. In addition, direct moving leads email lists around 30% (on average) of these clicks end up recovering their shopping cart , which leads to a sale that, a priori, you thought was lost through an email that was sent automatically. Nobody gives more for less!

But, to do so, it is essential, fundamental and unavoidable to make one small detail: that the user has entered their email address at checkout before leaving with the wind blowing. So don't forget that the first piece of information you should ask the user for during the purchasing process is, without a doubt, their email address .

abandoned-cart

What should those recovery emails be like?
Subject and preview
Here's the key to getting users who have abandoned their shopping cart on your e-commerce site to open your email. When writing the subject, you need to keep in mind a few key aspects:

Let it have a little spark . Don't leave the typical "You have abandoned your cart."
Make sure it reads well on mobile email management apps . If your subject is too long, part of the message will be lost.
Let the user intuit that it is their abandoned cart . This point may seem to conflict with the first one, but it is not (I give you an example below). The user should intuit that this is your email (especially in the first one) because they may have had some problem with the payment and need help.
Want an example? Imagine you sell plants online . A good subject for your first email might be:

“Don’t leave your plants standing.”

Does it meet the requirements? Yes: it has spark, it implies that it is the abandoned cart and it is short. Perfect. But don't think that the subject is everything, far from it. The preview is a very important part that a lot of companies forget, but that all users read before opening the email.

Play with it, take into account the length that can be read on mobile devices and make it complement the subject. You can also give it a bit of spark , which never hurts to recover abandoned carts.

Basic structure
Before we start talking about the text you should include in your abandoned cart emails , let's talk about the text you should NOT include. And that is, of course, the default text . No, please, otherwise the user will see you as a brand that doesn't put much effort into its image. And we don't want them to think that when what we want is for them to end up buying, right? That's it.

Okay, now let's look at the structure of a typical abandoned cart email :

Title: Tie it into the subject line as much as possible. It should still have some spark, but it doesn't have to be Shakespeare either. The user should already be focused on returning to their cart.
Small explanatory text: small, yes. With just two (or, at most, three) lines you can explain to the user (with a bit of wit, if possible) that you have saved the products they left in the abandoned cart in case they want to return to the checkout .
The products in question.
CTA to return to cart: I’ve said this many times, but I have to tell you one more time not to include anything that doesn’t give the user an idea of ​​what’s going to happen or where they’re going. In other words, no “Buy now”, please. Better “Return to cart”.
Text about payment problems: In the first abandoned cart email (we will later see that there may be more than one) you should include a paragraph in which you ask the user if they have had any problems at the time of payment. And, if so, give them options to contact you to solve it via email /phone/chat.