Your Go-to Guide to Recovering Abandoned Carts This BFCM

The Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) shopping season is the most profitable time of the year for eCommerce business owners. However, cart abandonment during the BFCM shopping frenzy continues to be a major issue for retailers.

As a matter of fact, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.57% across all industries. It's a time to get creative and come up with new ways to get people to complete their purchases. Although you may not recover all the abandoned carts, think about the revenue you can generate if you can successfully convert even 5%-6% of those lost customers.

The silver lining is – they aren’t lost forever. In fact, cart abandonment is an opportunity in disguise – a low-hanging fruit for eCommerce marketers. These customers are most likely to convert since they have already expressed their desire to buy your product(s).

Thus, following these tips to recover abandoned carts this BFCM shall help:

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1. Use A/B Testing

An eCommerce website can never have a zero cart abandonment rate. Yet, it’s important to determine what’s causing people to not go through with the purchase. eCommerce business owners and marketers can do so with the help of Google Analytics and A/B testing.

Google Analytics helps you identify:

• Pages visited by prospective customers
• Actions taken on your site
• Time spent on a particular page
• Organic vs. paid sessions
• The number of new and returning visitors, etc.

Before BFCM, you must integrate your eCommerce website with Google Analytics if you haven’t done so already. It will help you determine the actions required to reduce the cart abandonment rate, such as streamlining the checkout process, offering guest checkout, displaying clear call-to-actions (CTAs), and more.

But how do you identify what's bringing results and what isn’t? That’s where A/B testing comes in. A/B testing is a marketing research method that compares the effectiveness of two versions of a webpage, app, advertisement, or other marketing material.

While conducting A/B testing, change only one KPI (key performance indicator) at a time, see the results, and then move on to the next KPI. This way, you’ll learn exactly what’s bringing back customers and what isn’t.

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2. Run Dynamic Ads with Exciting Offers

Retargeting is a digital marketing technique that involves displaying dynamic ads to web users based on their previous on-site activity. The ads are matched to the user's browsing patterns and are often served as a popup on a site they previously visited.

In fact, retargeting has a 1,046% efficiency rate compared to other ad placement strategies. If you are not sure what dynamic ads are, they are a form of advertising that utilizes algorithms to serve the most appropriate ad to the right person at the right time.

Dynamic ads use a variety of data points to determine the best ad to show, including location, search history, and users' online behaviour. But running dynamic ads to remind them of abandoned products is not enough. It’s crucial to include exciting offers to maximize conversions.

It could be:

• Buy online, pick up in-store like Sephora
• Interest-free payments through Shop Now, Pay Later like Boohoo
• Extended return periods (60 days or more) like JCPenney

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3. Reach Out on Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger is a great way to connect with customers, offer customer service, and stay on top of their needs. The popular messaging app has 1.3 billion monthly users, making it a promising medium for re-engaging cart abandoners.

Moreover, a study found that Facebook Messenger has a 5.8% clickthrough rate, which is slightly greater than SMS at 5.4%. To convert most cart abandoners, you can automate reminders during BFCM to handle the high traffic.

Combine it with push notifications and cart recovery emails, and you’ve got yourself back on track!

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4. Show Exit-Intent Popups

Exit-intent popups are a new form of advertising that uses a popup window to target people who are about to leave a website. They are typically used for eCommerce sites that offer a discount on their products to incentivize people to stay on the site.

Exit-intent popups are usually triggered by a timer, which counts down the seconds until a user navigates away from a site. When the timer expires, the popup window appears and displays a message that offers a limited-time incentive to return to the site.

The popup might as well be your last chance to persuade customers to go through the purchase during BFCM. Hence, make sure it’s simple and succinct.

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5. Display Shipping Options

It's not uncommon for people to abandon their shopping carts when they see the shipping cost. In fact, high shipping costs and hidden fees are one of the main culprits behind cart abandonment. When customers see unexpected shipping, most of the time, they decide to take their business elsewhere.

During BFCM, offer free shipping to your customers and make sure it’s displayed on the product page so that there is no element of surprise. According to a survey, free shipping is the biggest incentive that 94% of respondents hope for while shopping for holidays.

Hidden shipping costs, in particular, can contribute to customers' distrust of your brand. They feel as if money is unjustly being siphoned off of them.

This is why even if you are not offering free shipping, make sure your shipping options are clearly displayed on a dedicated "Shipping Information" page as well as on the product pages (not just on the checkout page).

If you can’t afford free shipping on all orders, you have other options like:

• Expedited shipping for an additional fee
• Free shipping threshold, i.e., free shipping is offered only if the average order value (AOV) reaches a certain value ($100, for instance)

Whatever you choose, be transparent.

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The Takeaway

Cart abandonment is all too common any time of the year, but more so during BFCM due to a barrage of offers. Sometimes, it leaves consumers confused about what they want to buy. Therefore, you need to be more strategic, vigilant, and creative than ever to sense what's causing people to abandon carts on your eCommerce website.

Tools such as Google Analytics are built to help you in that aspect. Moreover, you need to use tried-and-tested methods like A/B testing, displaying dynamic ads and exit-intent popups, automating Facebook cart abandonment messages, and being super transparent about your shipping options.

Make sure your messaging, too, is refined to the needs of your customers.