It can be frustrating moving your buyers through the sales funnel only to lose them at the point of purchase. Do you know why shoppers fail to complete their purchases on your site? What can you do to reduce cart abandonment?
Using the best strategies from sales negotiation training courses, you can improve customer satisfaction and increase conversions. Check out these five ways to reduce abandonment rates and avoid losing sales.
Improve User Experience
According to the Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate across all industries is close to 70%. One of the most common reasons people abandon carts on websites is poor user experience. Either the user gets stuck, has to wait too long, becomes confused, or finds out the total sale price is way above the advertised price.
Simple changes to how you present your site can avoid people abandoning their carts. It’s vital to continually improve your website and checkout process with the buyer in mind. Some of the challenges users often experience include poor design and unclear instructions.
To avoid initial cart abandonment, you can improve the user experience by training in and practicing conversion optimization. Some best practices include:
- Removing unnecessary optional fields in the forms.
- Simplifying the payment process.
- Ensuring all discount codes work with ease.
- Optimizing your site for mobile users.
- A/B testing your site elements. Test your calls to action, website colors, button placement, page layout, negotiation strategies, and types of media.
- Writing clear copy, free of technical jargon.
- Including an FAQ page or section to address common buyer concerns.
Create Prompts and Reminders
A prospect abandoning their cart shouldn’t mean the end of the sales transaction. Today, there are many platforms recommended by sales courses for online merchants to engage and negotiate with customers.
Chat Apps
You can install chatbots to reach out to and negotiate with potential customers before they close the browser window. You may also reach out through email and messaging apps.
Reminders
For many prospects, carts are abandoned due to timing issues – maybe they didn’t have money at the time or were still considering other options. So, you don’t always need to offer incentives to get prospects to come back. Most times, all that’s needed is a friendly reminder.
If your prospect has provided their email address, send the prospect email content to encourage them to come back to their cart.
Create Urgency
Make your first email reminder a powerful one by creating some urgency. Be sure to mention any factors that may prevent the shopper from securing an item in their cart, such as limited stock.
Send your first nudge shortly after the abandonment. In most industries, best practices suggest sending your reminder within 24 hours.
Images and Calls to Action
Create compelling calls to action to persuade the prospect to complete their purchase. Include high-quality images to increase the prospect’s interest in completing the transaction.
If the first reminder doesn’t attract a response, send out a second reminder a few days later. A third reminder may be acceptable, depending on how you structure your messaging.
Use Retargeting Systems
Retargeting is a popular marketing tactic where brands serve ads to users who visited a website but didn’t perform a specific action such as buying. Marketing courses emphasize retargeting is an effective way to reach people who have already displayed interest in your products. In many cases, the person starts seeing ads for your brand on other pages that they visit.
Retargeting offers opportunities to retain customers, convert unsure prospects, or negotiate to upsell to existing buyers. There are many different platforms you can use. Some of the most popular are Facebook ads and Google Ads.
Retargeting platforms make it easy to set up a remarketing campaign. With minimal merchant training, the platforms take care of the technical stuff such as:
- Leaving cookies.
- Monitoring shoppers’ behaviors.
- Analyzing metrics such as conversions, clicks, views, and impressions.
Reserve the Items
Make sure your prospects know for how long you will be holding the items in their shopping cart. Online shoppers often leave items in their cart with the intention of coming back later. However, if left too late, the cart will be emptied and the shopper has to start their purchase afresh.
Rather than spend time trying to remember what they’d put in the cart and adding back the items one by one, many buyers will decide to simply leave.
If you don’t have one already, consider installing a script into your e-commerce website that saves the cart’s content upon the prospect leaving your site. If you already have a cart-retaining script but find you regularly experience visitors returning to empty carts, consider extending the number of time items remain in a shopper’s cart.
Regular reminders to alert the customer about their saved cart items are also a great way of avoiding lost sales.
24 hours before removing the items from the cart, send a final courtesy message. Knowing the items are still saved in the cart may be exactly what the prospect needs to prompt them into action.
Create Win-Win Offers
The mark of an expert sales negotiator is the ability to create win-win solutions. Your sales can benefit if you put some effort into resolving the prospect’s concerns. If reminders fail, maybe it’s time to present a new offer to the buyer.
Although the prospect may have been only window-shopping, a win-win offer could motivate them to take the next step. For instance, emailing informational content about an item in a shopper’s cart could make the shopper feel more favorable toward the product. In turn, the window shopper may then decide to make the purchase.
The content could include user reviews, product demos and training courses, and other value-adding resources. Providing this extra value can win you more sales while improving customer satisfaction.
Discounts
Win-win offers often take the form of product discounts. In case you choose to send discount offers, avoid sending them too soon. Give your initial nudge to the customer a chance to work before you consider lowering your profit margins.
Remember, avoid bombarding the prospect with too many messages. An overzealous approach can be a turn-off and could show up as a negative in future customer reviews.
