It’s no secret that cart abandonment rates in WooCommerce stores are sky-high. Prior studies by the Baymard Institute have revealed that over 69.82% of shoppers are likely to abandon their cart at some point during the checkout process!
If you’re like most store owners, you’ve probably experienced this first hand. You can’t seem to shake the feeling that there is something more you could be doing to recover abandoned carts and make your customers happy. So, what should you do?
Moreover, losing customers is never fun for anyone, but it’s even worse when you lose them before they’ve completed their purchase or made payment arrangements with your business.
When a customer abandons their cart, it can be difficult to know what went wrong with your checkout process or product offering.
For this reason, we’ll be discussing the strategies to combat abandoned carts in your WooCommerce store and how you can recover those potential sales! Let’s dive deeper.
What are Abandoned Carts?
Abandoned carts are a common issue for online stores. In fact, it’s estimated that about two-thirds of all shopping carts are abandoned before the customer completes their purchase.
An abandoned cart is a customer action in which the user adds an item to their shopping cart, but does not complete the checkout process before leaving the site. This results in a lost sale and can be costly for eCommerce stores.
Unfortunately, many online stores are unaware of how many sales they lose on average. Brands that run eCommerce sites should implement an abandoned cart recovery process to save as many sales as possible.
There are plenty of reasons that push a shopper to abandon their carts. Besides, most of us have found ourselves in a similar scenario before!
Reasons Why Shoppers Abandon Carts
Establishing the primary cause can be difficult, but there are a few main reasons for cart abandonment. Let’s look at some of the most common reasons why customers abandon their carts.
Long checkout process
This is the number one reason for cart abandonment. Customers are not interested in spending time filling out a bunch of forms and providing their personal information. They would rather buy from a store that has a quick and easy checkout process.
Lack of trust
Customers may not feel comfortable buying from a store if they cannot find any information about the company. They may also not feel safe entering their credit card details on an unknown site.
High shipping costs
Customers may be unwilling to pay high shipping costs, especially if the product they are purchasing is not very expensive. To win customers back, consider offering lower shipping rates within your target market’s budget. Here are some of the best shipping plugins for WooCommerce to add to your store.
Limited product selection
If the customer cannot find what they are looking for on your site, they will likely leave and purchase from a competitor. Ensure to have a wide selection of products available in your store.
Strategies to Recover Abandoned Carts Sales in WooCommerce
When it comes to recovering abandoned cart sales, there are several strategies you can implement in your WooCommerce store. Here are some of the most important strategies.
Send follow-up emails for abandoned cart recovery
If your customers didn’t complete their purchase because they got distracted, a follow-up email might be the way to go. Sending an email to everyone who abandoned their carts is the best way of recovering these sales. You can use a tool like Follow-up Emails and Recovery Messages in WooCommerce to send helpful emails for this purpose.
Implement exit-intent popups and cart notifications
Exit-intent popups and cart notifications are an excellent strategy for recovering abandoned carts. These messages will appear when a user is about to leave your website. The message will ask the user if they want to finish their purchase or leave the website. This is a great way of recovering abandoned carts, as it can be very effective in getting users to finish their purchase.
Create a smooth checkout process
Ensure that your website is easy to use and that customers don’t have any trouble purchasing. You can do that by designing your website in a way that makes it easy for users to find what they’re looking for.
Offer free/low-cost shipping
If possible, offer free or low-cost shipping to encourage customers to complete their orders. You can even upsell this service, giving you the chance to upsell more products. To avoid issues, make sure your shipping rates are accurate and reflect current costs on all of your products. Also, check on WooCommerce shipping calculators and how you can utilize them.
Using the Retainful WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugin
Retainful is a powerful plugin that enables you to create custom abandoned cart recovery emails. The plugin provides many other features, such as sending automated follow-up emails and emailing cart update reminders to customers who have placed orders but didn’t complete the checkout process.
You’ll first need to install and activate the Retainful – WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery Emails plugin to get started. You can do that from your WordPress dashboard by going to Plugins > Add New and searching for Retainful.
Once activated, navigate to your WooCommerce dashboard page and go to Retainful > Settings. Ensure to configure all the plugin’s settings in the setup.
Next, click on the “Get Started for Free” button in the “Connection” section to proceed. However, if you have already purchased the plugin, input your App ID & App Secret in the boxes provided.
In the following step, pick “WooCommerce” as your choice option.
Once you have selected your platform, insert the link to your WooCommerce store as shown below without including “https://” and click on the “Create” button.
Lastly, copy and paste the App ID and App Secret to your WooCommerce store and click on the “Connect” button.
Once complete, you’ll get a screen with an option of visiting your dashboard. Click “Visit Your Dashboard” to proceed. You’ll have access to your store’s dashboard and cart reports here.
Now, your account is ready, and you should enable the automatic sending of emails. To do this, click on “Get Started” on the Create an abandoned cart recovery campaign tab from your Retainful dashboard.
All emails sent at configured time intervals will be listed on the Emails page along with their status. In addition, you can choose to create other email templates using the pre-configured options. Click on the “Go Live” button to make a template live. You might also want to check out our guide on customizing WooCommerce emails.
On the next page, you’ll have an option to edit the template. Ensure to customize the text with your preferred options, i.e., adding a logo, links, etc. Once done, click on “Save” on the top-right far corner of your dashboard to save your changes.
Next, you need to set your time interval and Email subject, respectively. Click “Save and Set Live” to save your changes.
And that’s all! Your email template will be activated, and it will automatically send emails to any shopper who abandons their cart before checkout.
The Retainful plugin is available as a free and premium version. Other useful plugins for a similar purpose include: YITH WooCommerce recover abandoned cart, WooCommerce Recover Abandoned cart, and Hubspot for WooCommerce.
With that said, you can now start recovering abandoned cart sales in WooCommerce.
Final Words
While there is no surefire way to recover every abandoned cart, using the methods we’ve outlined should give you a good starting point. And with a bit of practice, you’ll easily identify and target abandoned carts like a pro.
The strategies we’ve covered can be used to identify and target potential customers who have abandoned their carts, as well as strategies for enticing them to return and complete their purchases.
Besides, with the Retainful - Free WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugin, you can automate the whole process, making it even easier to recover carts.
So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and start selling!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below. And don’t forget to check our latest blogs for more helpful tips and tricks!
My abandoned carts are not being recovered.
Make sure that your Retainful plugin is active and not disabled, then double-check the email formatting for your SMTP server. It may be necessary to contact your hosting provider for help with SMTP settings.
I see multiple emails for the same order. What could be the problem?
This is likely due to a mismatch in your email formatting. Ensure that the email formatting in your Retainful plugin matches the account settings you have for your SMTP server.
I’m using WooCommerce Multi-Location, but it does not show my other store locations.
WooCommerce Abandoned Carts Recovery requires WooCommerce Multi-Location Pro. Please upgrade your installation to have access to all the features of this plugin.
I’m getting an error “Invalid Order ID. Please try again.”
This is likely due to a mismatch in your order IDs. Ensure that the order IDs in your Retainful plugin match the order IDs in WooCommerce. You can find these under Settings > General in WooCommerce.
