Shopify Cart Abandonment Popups for Black Friday
Black Friday has become something of a tradition in the USA (and the concept has spread to other countries, particularly the UK). Traditionally the Friday following Thanksgiving, Black Friday sees many stores offering discounted products and is one of the high street’s biggest days of the year.
It is no surprise that Black Friday discounts have spread to the eCommerce world. Indeed, Cyber Monday – the Monday following Black Friday – is fast becoming established as a stand-alone eCommerce occasion of its own. What can an eCommerce store expect this Black Friday and Cyber Monday?
A rush of sales to take advantage of your discounted products is the positive side of the story. The negative comes in the form of an increased number of carts abandonment, which is already a major problem for online retailers. Why do consumers abandon shopping carts, and what steps can the online store take to counter the problem?
Let’s begin by looking at some informative statistics relating to abandoned carts and lost sales, and then we’ll take a detailed look at how to keep your cart abandonment rates as low as possible on the Black Friday – Cyber Monday occasion.
Source: Freepik.com
Table of Contents
Some Cart Abandonment Statistics
Cart abandonment is perhaps the biggest problem facing online stores. Without further hesitation here are some revealing and shocking statistics:
The average cart abandonment rate across all eCommerce markets and all buying formats is an astounding 69%. Think about that for a moment: it’s quite possible that 7 out of 10 visitors to your online store will not complete the transaction.
- Cart abandonment by consumers using a mobile handset is more than 85%.
- The online automotive industry has the highest rate at over 96%. The baby and childcare sector is next with a 94% abandonment rate.
- Cart abandonment is responsible for the eCommerce market losing $18billion per year.
We can see from the above that cart abandonment is not a minor problem, but a massive one. The consumer of today wants to get the transaction done quickly and with minimum effort. The entire attraction of online shopping is, after all, convenience. The eCommerce world is a relatively new market and is rapidly becoming more adept at giving the consumer the service they expect and deserve. Our next step is to find out why people abandon their carts.
Why Do Consumers Abandon Shopping Carts?
If you have shopped online, you’ve probably abandoned a cart before completing the transaction. What was your reason? Or, you may have found a website that took too long to load.
Compared to 2019, 2020 saw higher cart abandonment overall. The global average increased from a 2019 rate of 71.36% to 77.79%, a 9% increase year over year.
It’s frightening for the retailer that almost 6 out of 10 consumers will go elsewhere if the site has not loaded within three seconds! The following are the main reasons why consumers fail to complete a transaction at an eCommerce store:
- 63% of abandoned carts are due to high shipping costs that were not explained before the checkout page. Quite simply, people do not appreciate ‘hidden charges.’
- 36% of people will abandon a transaction if the delivery time is too long. Too long is usually a matter of a couple of days – depending upon the product.
- Almost a third will abandon the cart if they get to the checkout and are asked to re-enter details, they have already registered with you.
- 46% will leave your store if they have a discount code and it does not work or is no longer valid. Discount codes are a major incentive for online shoppers.
- Research into the online fashion market discovered that 40% would abandon a transaction due to poor website functionality. One of the main reasons linked to this is inadequate photography that does not give a satisfactory impression of the product.
Other reasons for abandoned carts go some way to explaining the surprisingly high rate of abandonment. For example, the following reasons came up in a recent survey of online retail habits:
The consumer was just browsing. This is the digital equivalent of window shopping, and it is up to the store’s marketing and lead conversion tactics to convince browsing consumers to become customers.
- The consumer was comparing prices. We all do this as we want the best deal.
- They prefer to buy the product in a brick-and-mortar store, often because of the returns policy of online retailers.
- A small percentage cited technical issues as the reason for not completing the purchase.
This is far from a comprehensive list, and there is one further point that crops up often: a lack of suitable payment options. It should be clearer now that there is a direction you need to take to make sure your store is optimized to minimize cart abandonment. We’ll be looking at how to do it towards the finish of this article, but before that, we need to get an idea of just how big the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is for Shopify online retailers.
What Should You Know About Black Friday?
We know Black Friday is massive in terms of sales, but just how big is it for the eCommerce market? Online store host Shopify issued the following figures relating to the four-day Black Friday weekend of 2018:
- Total sales across all Shopify stores came to more than $1.5 billion.
- At peak sales per hour reached $37 million.
- Orders per minute reached a high of almost 11,000.
Remember that average abandoned carts rate of 69%? That says the $1.5 billion mentioned above is just 31% of potential sales without the problem of cart abandonment. Of course, it is not possible to eradicate the problem entirely, but it is possible to improve it.
Let’s move forward and take a close look at some of the methods for abandoned cart recovery. First, a quick recap on the importance of attending to this problem.
Source: Freepik.com
Why are Abandoned Carts Important?
Briefly, we’ve seen the percentages and the money involved and these are quite alarming statistics. There is plenty of data to prove that reaching out to customers who have abandoned a cart – or indeed who are showing signs of doing so – does have an effect. In the next section, we take a look at the methods you can use to recover abandoned carts.
How to Tackle Cart Abandonment?
Here’s where we are at right now: we know that cart abandonment is a major problem that is losing a Shopify store a great deal of potential income. We know the reasons why people abandon shopping carts. We also know that due to a huge increase in online retail traffic the Black Friday weekend will see an increase in cart abandonment. For Shopify retailers looking to capitalize on more sales, now is the time to apply the methods and routines that can help with abandoned checkouts. Let’s have a look at some things you can implement right now.
Abandoned Cart Recovery Campaigns
The great advances in software and app development have benefited eCommerce to a huge degree. Our first suggestion for tackling cart abandonment is to use exit-intent popups and cart abandonment popups. For example, online retail experts Socital has designed and developed an app specific to Shopify stores to tackle this very problem. It is surprisingly simple to create pop-ups and automate their use.
This app is cleverly configured to target consumers using a series of carefully designed automated messages that approach the consumer from a certain angle. You could offer a discount to consumers who have stalled at a certain page for a specific time. Making the discount time-limited is a terrific way of drawing them back into your store.
Following up on those who have left with a retargeting campaign – perhaps using a template that offers them free shipping over a certain amount – is also a successful way of clawing back a percentage of your lost sales. This app also allows for custom calls to action – ‘complete my purchase’ or ‘checkout’ or ‘back to my cart’ are examples – so that you can direct the customer straight to the page they need to be.
An innovative feature of the Socital app is the ability to target abandoned carts between certain values. This can be useful in retargeting those with higher value carts that may be entitled to free shipping or those with lower values offering free shipping should they add another product – in fact, any configuration of an exit-intent popup message is possible.
One other feature of this app is that the abandoned cart recovery popup can be placed anywhere in the store, rather than just at checkout. This allows for targeting those visitors who have been inactive on a product page, for example, for a prescribed time.
The app, available for stores integrated with Shopify, has been successful for leading online fashion retailer Laura Ashley who regained almost 18% of abandoned carts with a 32.2% click-through rate. While 18% may not at first seem a great amount, let’s quickly go back to that $1.5 billion Black Friday weekend sales and the 69% cart abandonment rate.
Briefly, if there we 0% abandoned carts the sales total for the four days would be a colossal $4.83 billion. We know that 0% is not possible, but reclaiming 18% could add a further $59 million to the total. That’s a good recovery figure in anyone’s books.
Let’s look at some further methods of dealing with cart abandonment.
Abandoned Cart Emails
Put your email marketing into force. If you want to re-engage shoppers who left items in their carts without completing checkout, you should have in place a well-tailored abandoned cart recovery email strategy. Time is of the essence: cart abandonment emails sent within the first hour of abandonment perform best. Since you have a very limited window to win them back set up a campaign trigger to send an email instantly after the cart is abandoned.
Optimize Checkout for Mobile Commerce
In the first part of the article, we highlighted the massive 80%-plus cart abandonment by mobile users. The smartphone is now the most popular device for browsing and shopping online. First and foremost, your eCommerce store simply must be optimized for mobile use.
The consumer wants an easy and enjoyable shopping experience with your brand, and any complications with ease of use will be off-putting. We touched on this earlier with comments about leaving a site if it does not load within three seconds, and also people citing technical issues as reasons for cart abandonment.
Be Clear and Open About Shipping Costs
Ensure that the consumer is aware of shipping costs when they are browsing the product. As we’ve seen, one of the biggest causes of cart abandonment is that of delivery charges being added without warning at checkout. If you cannot afford to include free shipping on all orders offer it for purchases above a certain level. Also, make sure your delivery times are in line or preferably better than those of your competitors.
Offer a Free Returns Policy
One reason visitors to your store choose to browse with you and then buy on the high street is the ability to try out or try on the product before buying and the ease of returning the product. A free-returns offer overcomes this problem and is particularly attractive in the clothing and footwear markets.
Simplify the Checkout Process
Make checkout as simple as possible. If your customers have registered for a newsletter or marketing campaign you already have their details. Asking them to give them again is a major part of cart abandonment. Offer a quick guest checkout with instant access and then reach out for their details later.
Various and Trusted Payment Methods
Consumers are wary of payment methods that they do not already use. Make sure you have the most popular payment methods on your store – Visa and MasterCard for example, plus PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and any of other major e-wallet payment portals.
Conclusion
The Black Friday weekend offers a major opportunity for Shopify stores to increase sales. The cult-following the occasion has built over the years does half the job for you, so be aware that your customers and many potential new customers are looking not just for great bargains and discounts, but also for a store that is easy to navigate, enjoyable to visit, and that looks great and works perfectly especially on mobile devices.
We hope we have given you some ideas and inspiration that will enable you to be ready and optimized for Black Friday, so good luck and enjoy it!
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