Turning Abandoned Carts into Sales: A Shopify Store's Guide

An abandoned e-commerce shopping cart is more than lost revenue. It is a missed opportunity to convert first-time customers and foster a loyal customer relationship. In some cases, it could be a sign of friction and other issues in your sales funnel. Companies that master the unavoidable issue of abandoned orders can grow revenue while ensuring other business processes run smoothly.

Understanding Cart Abandonment in E-Commerce

Research from the Baymard Institute reveals the average cart abandonment rate across e-commerce sites is 69%. According to HotJar, cart abandonment on mobile devices is even higher at 85%. While this may seem drastic at first glance, let’s add some context. Not all abandoned carts are a sign of a lost sale. Some add-to carts are simple bookmarking or window shopping by potential customers without the intent to buy.

According to Baymard, the most common reason for e-commerce cart abandonment is too high extra costs. After that, required account creation and lack of trust are the most prevalent reasons. Below, you can see additional causes for abandoned carts.

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With so many lost orders, it’s unsurprising that abandoned online shopping carts have a massive impact on e-commerce revenue. This is why abandoned cart recovery marketing is one of the most profitable. According to Klaviyo, abandoned cart marketing can lead to an average revenue per recipient (RPR) of $3.65. This is 37% higher than the next highest email sequence, the “Welcome” series.

Native Abandoned Cart Functionality in Shopify

Shopify has pre-built options for abandoned carts, abandoned checkout, and abandoned product browse. They allow for light customization of the workflow conditions and the email messages. The platform considers any cart unfulfilled for more than 10 minutes after customers enter their email as abandoned. Abandoned orders are removed from the Shopify admin if they are over three months old.

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These native recovery campaigns can be helpful but are limited. Because high abandonment rates can signal deeper issues in your sales funnel, knowing and better addressing the causes is key to reducing lost profits and potential damage to your brand image.

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Steps for Reducing Abandoned eCommerce Shopping Carts

Here are some practical steps to capture more sales and lower your Shopify cart abandonment rate.

1. Optimize the Checkout Flow

A seamless start-to-finish shopping experience is foundational to improving the average conversion rate and limiting lost purchases. In this journey, the checkout process is the most critical. A certain level of abandonment is natural. However, losing a potential buyer due to avoidable issues during checkout is how lost revenue starts to add up.

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After minimizing the steps required to place an order, enabling guest checkout, and ensuring a mobile-friendly shopping flow, here are some ways to structure your checkout experience for better conversions.

Display Multiple Payment Options

The ability to choose between payment methods can go a long way in convincing shoppers to complete their orders and improve the shopping cart abandonment rate. Some buyers are only comfortable using specific types of payment online. Others may have financial considerations that make one option favorable to another.  

You can cater to more buyers by supporting digital wallets and PayPal. These let customers pay without needing to enter any specific payment details. Another way to eliminate purchase hesitation is to offer installment payments through an app like Afterpay or Affirm. This can have a significant impact on improving conversions for high-priced items.

Emphasize Trust Signals and Social Proof

Social proof is a powerful ally in combating cart abandonment. Many shoppers will make it to checkout only to go back and reassess their decision. If they have second thoughts, they may forego their purchase. However, the presence of reviews and testimonials can provide the final assurance needed to carry through with the order.

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Start by highlighting past reviews on product pages. Try to prioritize feedback that best highlights the value of your products or addresses common concerns. You can also incorporate reviews from verified third-party sites like Trustpilot. These ratings will establish more credibility and give potential buyers additional reassurance.

2. Proactively Engage Potential Abandoners

Combating cart abandonment isn’t limited to after shoppers have already left your site. Proactive merchants can find innovative ways to engage potential cart abandoners before they leave. A common way to do this is through exit intent popups. An app tracks users' behavior and when it senses they are about to exit with items in their cart, it displays a popup message.

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When accompanied by a discount or other incentive these can help recapture some lost sales. However, they can be obtrusive and annoying to shoppers. The exit intent triggers are often inaccurate and some shoppers may intend to complete the purchase at a later time.

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An alternative is to use a more nuanced predictive analysis. For example, the Rep AI disengaged feature uses an advanced algorithm to engage shoppers more naturally. The AI has a deep understanding of shopper behavior and uses more than simple mouse (or cursor) movements to decide when and if to interact with the potential lost cart.

3. Provide Timely Customer Support

We’ve all had questions about a product at one point when shopping online. While some consumers use online searches to find answers, others prefer to contact the brand directly. If a question is pertinent enough, they will withhold placing an order until it’s answered.

In this scenario, it’s vital to provide quick support. Waiting too long for a reply can be a frustrating experience for shoppers. When it happens, they may lose interest or turn to a competing solution. This can happen whether or not they’ve added products to their cart.

To address service-related cart abandonment, enrich your site with as much self-service information as possible. A well-made and findable FAQ section can help you proactively answer many questions from potential buyers. For other concerns, AI support tools let you provide around-the-clock assistance at scale. Prompt 24/7 service can help lower abandonment while fostering loyalty and trust.

With Rep AI, you can train the AI model by adding your most asked questions as FAQs. The AI can then know exactly how to answer these inquiries and can learn from the information to quickly and accurately answer less commonly asked questions from visitors.

 4. Don’t Overlook Shipping & Return Details

While the mere presence of extra costs (shipping, taxes, and fees) will deter some buyers, others only abandon their purchase if presented with these details later in the checkout process. As such, you can help reduce lost carts by clearly displaying any shipping charges upfront on product pages.

With Shopify, you can also have taxes automatically calculated (based on user location) and displayed with product prices by enabling “Include sales tax in product price and shipping rate” from the Settings > Taxes and Duties page.

Another way to boost buyer confidence is to take the same approach with refunds and returns. Some shoppers will create an abandoned cart if they are unclear about your returns policy. Since you can’t rely on visitors navigating to your returns policy page, you can help instill more confidence by referencing it on your product or cart pages.

For example, Snow Cosmetics uses Rep AI to show a “30-day money-back guarantee” message on product pages. The strategy has resulted in fewer shoppers unsure of how the returns policy works and a 22% conversion rate on those pages.

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Best Shopify Apps for Reducing Cart Abandonment

Below are some of the best apps to assist in reducing shopping cart abandonment on Shopify sites:

Rep AI

Rep AI is a robust AI sales tool that you can use for several actionable cart recovery strategies. The platform comes with deep data insights including real-time analysis of cart abandonment and recovery conversion rates. These insights help provide a clear, live view of your store’s performance so that any necessary changes can be made swiftly.

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Rep AI features an easy-to-configure Abandoned cart power-up that intelligently engages visitors when they are most likely to convert. To set it up, you simply need to enter a chat message and select a discount from your Shopify admin.

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In addition to the abandoned cart recovery power-up, Rep serves as an invaluable shopping concierge who provides superb customer service while you handle more important business functions. Beyond giving around-the-clock support, the AI provides detailed analytics, including extensive data on the specifics of visitor conversations. You can use this to add messaging to your site that proactively addresses these concerns.

Advanced AI Analytics to Combat Sales Abandonment

Utilizing visitor preferences insights, you gain clarity into the exact performance of each item and where users drop off in the purchase funnel. This information can be an invaluable aid in optimizing your sales processes and preventing lost revenue due to poor conversion rates. With native e-commerce analytics, you may have stats showing the number of visitors that exit without a purchase. However, you get little insight into why. Rep AI analytics, built on conversational data, gives you reasons for churn before purchase.

Consider the sample image above. In it, 268 shoppers who interacted with the chat but didn’t buy left due to a lack of product information. This represents 34% of missed conversions, a stark contrast to the typically common “Hidden costs” and “Forced account creation”, each under 1%. Without AI analytics, the merchant might assume their poor conversions resulted from these more common causes, not a lack of product details.

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However, with the insights, the merchant knows where their improvement efforts will be most impactful. Instead of over-optimizing an already working pricing strategy or checkout flow, they can simply enrich their product detail pages with more information. The AI assists these efforts as you can drill into the metrics to see all the conversations in which a visitor left because of a lack of details. This not only informs you which product pages need updating but you can review the conversations to get specific insights into what missing information customers are asking about and how they’re asking it.

Klaviyo

Klaviyo is a powerful marketing platform with several solutions for creating and automating abandoned cart recovery marketing campaigns. One of the most effective options is email automation. It offers more thorough customization and targeting than Shopify’s default abandoned cart flow with an intuitive user-friendly platform. 

PostScript

PostScript is a Shopify marketing platform centered around SMS and push notification marketing. It is great for setting up automation messages with direct cart links. However, one drawback is that it relies on users being subscribed to SMS notifications. It’s often helpful to support the platform with another lead-capturing tool. For example, with Rep AI you can seamlessly integrate your Postscript lists to collect subscribers on-site while offering immediate discounts in the chat.

Wrap It Up: Your Next Steps to Slash Cart Abandonment

Making an effort to reduce cart abandonment is important for more than just increasing revenue. It also helps ensure a seamless experience by identifying and addressing underlying problems in your store’s strategy and processes. By providing excellent support, optimizing your checkout experience, and disclosing all key information upfront, your business will be positioned for long-term success.

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The right tools are essential to doing so in an efficient manner. None more so than AI. With a powerful tool like Rep AI, you can offer great customer service and launch recovery campaigns from a single platform.

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Sign up for a 30-day free trial of Rep AI and start recovering more lost revenue for your business.

Quick Answers and FAQs

What are the best practices for designing effective cart recovery emails?

To maximize sales from abandoned carts, send the first recovery email 1-2 hours after abandonment, followed by 3-5 emails in the next few days. Ensure your emails are visually appealing, on-brand, and include clear calls-to-action with personalized content like customer names and cart details.

Incorporating social proof and offering incentives like discounts or free shipping in later emails can be effective. Mobile optimization is crucial for accessibility.

When is the best time to send cart emails after a customer abandons their cart?

To optimize abandoned cart recovery, start with an email 20-60 minutes after abandonment to engage customers while the purchase is relevant, yet allow them space to resolve issues. Follow up with a second email 24-48 hours later for a gentle reminder. A third email after 3-7 days can emphasize urgency, possibly with an incentive.

What are checkout emails and how can they help reduce cart abandonment on Shopify?

Checkout emails are automated messages that reduce cart abandonment rates on Shopify stores. They include three types: abandoned cart emails, abandoned checkout emails, and order confirmation emails. By sending timely and personalized messages with clear call-to-actions, incentives, and social proof, businesses can encourage customers to complete their purchases. Shopify's features allow for customization and analytics to enhance these strategies.

How can discount codes help in recovering abandoned carts on Shopify?

Discount codes can recover abandoned carts on Shopify. Create specific discount codes for recently abandoned carts. Use Shopify's automation to send personalized emails with these codes, highlighting the offer. Design these emails with engaging subject lines and product images to remind customers of their abandoned items. Set automatic discounts to apply when customers click through from the email, reducing checkout friction.

How can I minimize unexpected shipping costs to reduce cart abandonment on my Shopify store?

To minimize unexpected shipping costs and reduce cart abandonment on your Shopify store, focus on transparency and flexibility. Display real-time shipping rates upfront based on location and order details, and offer a range of shipping options to match customers' preferences and budgets. Streamline your shipping strategy by implementing flat-rate or table-rate shipping and optimizing packaging to lower costs. Enhance customer satisfaction by providing clear shipping information and estimated delivery dates.

What factors influence the cart rate on my ecommerce site?

In e-commerce, turning casual browsers into buyers hinges on a few critical factors. Key elements include compelling product presentations, such as high-quality images and detailed descriptions, which captivate customers.

A seamless, user-friendly site with clear navigation and swift loading times enhances the shopping experience. Pricing plays a pivotal role, with transparent shipping costs and attractive offers like free shipping thresholds boosting add-to-cart rates.

Trust is fostered through visible security indicators and easy-to-find return policies, while a streamlined checkout process, featuring guest checkout options and diverse payment methods, reduces friction.

Implementing these strategies can encourage more shoppers to add items to their carts and complete purchases.

How many emails to customers should I send to successfully recover abandoned carts?

To recover abandoned carts, send three well-timed emails: a reminder 1-2 hours after abandonment, a second email 12-24 hours later to create urgency or provide social proof, and a third email 24-72 hours later offering an incentive like a discount.

This approach ensures engagement at critical moments, and with Rep AI’s capabilities, you can enhance this process with personalized, timely interactions to turn potential losses into confirmed sales.

What key elements should be included in email templates to effectively reduce cart abandonment?

To reduce cart abandonment, email templates should include key elements to engage and convert potential customers. A compelling, personalized subject line can capture attention, while the content should feature high-quality images of abandoned products, a clear call-to-action, and a reminder of the items in the cart. Offering incentives like limited-time discounts or free shipping can motivate customers to complete their purchase, and incorporating social proof like customer reviews can build trust.