Cart abandonment notifications: complete guide

According to HubSpot, the global cart abandonment rate is around 86%. You must have witnessed people dropping their carts on your online store. The reasons behind this behavior might differ, but the result is the same: tremendous loss of revenues.

Luckily, automation offers a vital countermeasure. Cart abandonment notifications are automated messages you can send to customers who have added items to their online shopping carts but have not completed their purchases.

Keep reading to better understand the reasons for this behavior and how to implement an abandoned cart automation workflow.

Why do people abandon their shopping carts?

A Statista report revealed the following factors as the most important reasons for the growing number of abandoned carts.

Price

A significant number of shoppers abandon their carts because they discover unexpected costs during the checkout, while others decide to shop somewhere else as they find a better price; the report revealed that 32% of surveyed shoppers state expensive as the reason for changing their buying decision.

Lack of commitment

Lack of urgency also contributes to this behavior. 37% of surveyed shoppers stated that they were simply browsing, meaning with no intent to buy in the first place. While others leave because they decided not to buy, simply because they don’t really need that item.

Tech issues

Technical issues can be a significant inhibitor. Websites can lack necessary optimizations and might crash or time out, irritating and pushing shoppers to leave. Still, lengthy and complicated checkout processes account for 21% of dropped carts.

Security concerns

The Statista survey revealed that excessive security checks or lack of them could contribute to cart abandonments. 17% of surveyed shoppers stated security concerns as their reason for dropping the carts. Indeed, people might be suspicious of payment links and do not feel comfortable submitting credit card information.

Addressing these common reasons is essential because cart abandonment will drastically affect your revenues.

Why are cart abandonment notifications important?

You must add cart abandonment notifications because those lost carts significantly affect your business.

Abandoned cart automation has an open rate of more than 41%. According to MooSend, these notifications will win back at least 10.7% of the lost sales. These stats will improve if you use the right channel to integrate your workflow.

But first, let’s see what else abandoned carts can affect.

Lost customer lifetime value

You must know that your customers are worth much more beyond their initial purchase values. Customers can be worth thousands in revenue for your store based on their lifetime value.

Unfortunately, losing customers will cost you thousands due to the low lifetime value. It also means that you will not even be able to recover their acquisition cost.

Higher customer acquisition costs

Spending money on social media, Google ads, and other channels to promote your brand and products should bring you suitable revenue. Unfortunately, you might be losing money without any revenues in return. You might keep spending on a particular ad because it’s driving clicks, only to discover that those people are not converting.

Cart abandonment creates a domino effect. It negatively affects all parts of your business. To amend your losses, you have to implement cart abandonment notifications. They are a one-time setup, but their effect will last forever and will directly address the above-explained problems.

How to set up abandoned cart notifications?

Track cart abandonment

First things first, you must keep track of your abandoned carts. Follow these steps to integrate a flow on your Google Analytics 4 account:

• 1. Sign in to your Google Analytics account
• 2. Click Explore

• 3. At the top of the screen, start a new funnel exploration template

• 4. Configure your exploration using these options: Select either a standard or trended funnel. In a trended funnel, you can see all the steps simultaneously or dive into a specific step by clicking the step names at the top of the visualization.
• “MAKE OPEN FUNNEL" toggle: Funnels can be "open" or "closed," which determines how users can enter the funnel: In an open funnel, users can enter the funnel at any step. In a closed funnel, users must enter the funnel in the first step.

• 5. Add the steps: they define the user journey you want to measure. You can define up to 10 steps in the funnel. Give each step a unique name. Finally, add the conditions: your users must meet to be included in that step.
• 6. Click APPLY

• Check the reports

Now, you can observe your data and understand the funnel perfectly well.

How to set up a cart abandonment notification flow on Shopify?

Abandoned cart notifications help recover lost sales. They are effective because they target customers who have already shown an interest in a product and may just need a gentle nudge to complete their purchase.

Setting up a cart abandonment workflow is easy. Just follow the below steps:

• . Log in to your Shopify account
• 1. From your Shopify account, Choose Marketing>2. Automations> 3. Create automation> 4. abandoned cart

• 5. Click on Use workflow

• 6. Preview the Trigger: When a customer leaves the online store
• 7. Check the abandonment type: it has to be CART

• 8. The default Wait time is 4 hours. We recommend you edit it to preferably 1 hour. Otherwise, you can experiment to find what best suits your store.

‍

• 9. Check if the customer has added new products or finished the checkout
• 10. Edit the condition of how many days since the last cart abandonment notification

• 11. Check if the product is in stock. You can delete this condition if you want to promote similar products, even if the initial item is out of stock

• 12. Click on view email email

• Edit the email and save it

• 13. Click on Turn on workflow

Before turning on the workflow, you can add more conditions and a second email to send a series of cart abandonment notifications.

You can experiment with the content of your notifications and make improvements along the way. Still, we have some tips you can rely on as a start.

Best practices to set up optimized notifications

Make the copy relevant to your product and brand

Let’s face the truth; notifications can be monotonous and will be discarded by users. To ensure your notification converts, make it relevant to your product and brand so that customers feel special and matter.

Emphasize the product's benefits left in the cart and its usefulness to the customer. Also, use your brand tone of voice, and don’t be afraid to sound familiar and speak your customers' language.

Use urgency

Urgency will drive faster actions. Most shoppers decide for fear of missing out. Use time-sensitive language such as "act now," "limited time offer," or "expires soon."

Also, highlight limited inventory to encourage customers to complete their purchase before the item sells out. Bold images and colors can double the effect.

Offer incentives

A simple reminder can sometimes be all a customer needs to return to your store and finish the purchase. Other times, they might need more than that, especially if their reasons for abandoning their cart were financial in the first place.

Offer them incentives such as discounts or promo codes and nudge them to return to their carts. You can also offer other incentives like free shipping, gift cards, or loyalty points.

Ensure your offer is time-limited to create a sense of urgency and push customers to buy before the offer expires.

These tactics will solve two major reasons behind cart abandonment, price and lack of commitment.

Automation platforms to set up abandoned cart notifications

To set up cart abandonment notifications, you need an automation platform. You can consider the following platforms.

Email

According to data from klaviyo, email is still an important option to consider when choosing your marketing automation platform. Cart abandonment notifications have an open rate of 41.18% and a 9.5% click rate. The estimated revenue per recipient is 5.81 dollars.

However, most users are no longer checking their personal emails. Therefore, you might require another channel.

WhatsApp

This channel has become one of the most favorite communications apps worldwide. According to Meta statics, 74% of users prefer to communicate with businesses on WhatsApp because it’s easy and it’s already installed and used daily with friends and family.

WhatsApp has an open rate of 98%, and most messages are read within the first three minutes of delivery. Exploit this and use WhatsApp API to automate the cart abandonment notifications. You will get 10x better results.

However, unlike the WhatsApp business app, WhatsApp API doesn’t have a user interface. Therefore, you will need a marketing solution such as Kartly to provide the necessary capabilities.

‍

‍