Are you looking for a way to recover more lost sales on your website? If so, you’re not alone. Business owners and marketers often struggle with turning visitors into customers. You may be shocked to learn that the average cart abandonment rate is 68% across all industries.
In other words, if 100 people add an item to their shopping cart, 68% will leave before they finalize their order. It doesn’t take long to figure out that you’re losing a ton of marketing opportunities and sales when users abandon their shopping cart.
We have good news. You can take steps to recover lost sales while visitors are on your website and long after they leave. Today, we will explore five tried and tested strategies you can use to recover lost sales and grow your business.
Let’s get started!
Simplify the Checkout Process
Here’s a quick question; have you ever abandoned an order while halfway through the checkout form? Don’t feel bad if you have because you’re in the majority. Believe it or not, 81% of consumers report abandoning a checkout form once they start filling it out.
Inconsistent pricing is the number one reason for order form abandonment. When people see prices on product pages, they expect to see the exact total when they pay. Additional fees like shipping costs can lead to users leaving before they complete their order.
You can stop visitors from leaving for this reason by using a consistent pricing system throughout your website. Include additional fees in the base cost so consumers can see their order total at a glance. Businesses that offer free shipping should include banners that show how much visitors need to spend to get free shipping.
Complicated checkout forms are the second leading cause of checkout page abandonment. You can keep people engaged by creating a simple order form with straightforward questions. Consumers also like having the option to have their information saved once they sign in. Include an autofill feature if you want to reduce abandonment on consecutive visits.
Create a Sense of Urgency
Another way to convince visitors to complete their order is to create a sense of urgency. In business, this is called FOMO marketing. FOMO stands for fear of missing out, and even if you’ve never heard the term, you’ve likely encountered a FOMO-style offer when shopping online.
Essentially, FOMO marketing is when you create a limited-time offer designed to get visitors to take immediate action. For instance, you could host a 24-hour flash sale where users can get 40% off their order. This is an excellent deal and will convince visitors that would otherwise leave your site to take advantage of the offer because they don’t want to miss out.
You can also create a sense of urgency by showing your current stock for each product. If there’s a fantastic deal on a product and only a few left in stock, even a hesitant shopper would think twice about leaving your site without placing an order.
Showcase Social Proof
It’s also possible to recover lost sales by showing social proof on your site. Social proof is evidence from paying customers and other businesses that you’re trustworthy and have a high-quality product.
The most common type of social proof is customer reviews. A whopping 97% of online shoppers look at reviews before placing an order. If you don’t have reviews and testimonials from customers on your site, they may leave your online store and try to find feedback somewhere else. Even if they find mostly positive reviews, you still have to hope that they follow through and come back to your site.
You can dramatically improve your abandonment rate by including reviews on your product and landing pages. Research shows that adding testimonials to sales pages for single products boosted conversions by 34%!
We also suggest including trust seals on your payment forms. You can get trust seals from reputable security companies like Norton Antivirus and McAfee. When users see that your site is protected by their favorite security company, they are more likely to hand over their payment and contact details.
Send Cart Abandonment Emails
Email marketing is a highly effective way to recover potential customers once they leave your website. If a user went through the trouble of making an account, they likely subscribed to your email list.
Instead of letting users leave without completing their order, you can create a drip campaign that contains a cart abandonment email series. Use this strategy to reach users 24 hours, 48 hours, and one week after they abandon their shopping cart.
Include special offers and personalized copy if you want to bring more people back to your site. Personalization plays a significant role in reaching users. In fact, emails with personalized subject lines get 26% more opens.
You could include the recipient’s name or the product they purchased in the subject line. An email that says, “Hey (Name), Still Want (Product?)” will get more opens and click-throughs than an email that simply reads, “You left something in your shopping cart!”
Make it Easy to Contact Support
Finally, we have to talk about your support team and their role in recovering lost sales. If you’re like many businesses, you use a combination of live chat and chatbots on your site to handle customer queries.
You can keep more people on your site if you train your chatbot to answer common questions with helpful pieces of content from your blog or FAQ section. Sometimes, a user needs a crisp answer before they commit to a purchase. A well-rounded chatbot system can help people without slowing down your live support team.
If a problem is unique or complicated, make sure your system can quickly direct users to a live support agent. The longer a customer has to wait before getting help, the less likely they are to place an order after their chat.
Train your support team to identify customer goals and pain points. When your live chat can determine what prospects need, even if users don’t know it themselves, your team can meet their expectations and direct them to the right solution for their problem.
Final Thoughts
It’s worth noting that you’re never going to bring back 100% of lost sales. However, if you use some of the strategies we’ve outlined today, you could turn a significant portion of your lost sales into happy customers.
