Some customers don’t have any problems shopping with you. They trust your store, they’re aware of shipping costs, they don’t mind signing up, and you already offer their preferred payment method. And yet, sometimes they still abandon their carts. Why?

A customer might fill their cart as a means of remembering what they’re going to order, and then set it aside for a period of time. Maybe they want to ask a family member if it’s the right product, and need to wait for the person to get home. Maybe they make a cart to “save” their order, planning to complete the purchase when they get paid the next day. Sometimes, carts get delayed for a short time, but aren’t abandoned — the customer just wanted to wait a bit.

But sometimes, waiting turns into forgetting, and sometimes a cart was forgotten right away due to a distraction. Maybe the power went out, or the phone rang, or something boiled over on the stove, or the kids woke up. You can’t possibly predict every single reason a customer might forget about their shopping cart, but it happens all the time!

You can recover forgotten shopping carts by communicating with the customer. Sometimes all it takes is a simple reminder, and they’ll return to complete checkout. Many are thankful that you reminded them. Some customers, however, need a little incentive. Maybe they’ve waited a few days and they’re not so sure they want to make the purchase now. You can still get many of them back, too, and in the same way.

Reminders for Momentary Distractions

Sometimes you can quickly recapture a customer’s attention before they click away from your store. One effective way to do this is to implement an unobtrusive box to appear on your site when the customer’s mouse movements suggest they’re about to leave, or if there’s been no activity for a few minutes. The box that appears can display a message that helps convince or remind the customer to complete their order. These boxes are not like pop-up ads — they are modals that appear in the same window as the website and usually resemble a rectangular card.
Not only are modals helpful in keeping a customer’s attention, they can also improve conversions overall by enticing the customer at the right time.

Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns

When a cart has been abandoned for a period of time, send your customers an email to remind them to finish their purchase. Sometimes this takes a little incentive, especially if they still don’t return after one email. You can choose to offer a discount code or other bonus to customers who return — getting 10% off might be just enough to bring them back!

The only way to do this effectively is with automation, whether through an email autoresponder campaign or through an app that provides a similar function, like a specialized Abandoned Carts Notification or Abandoned Cart Saver app. Depending on the app or service you use, you can send your customers a single abandoned cart email or a series of them.

Note that from behind your online store’s dashboard, you have no way of knowing why a cart was abandoned. You can’t set up a recovery campaign for people who forgot and a separate campaign for people who weren’t sure about the purchase. You just can’t know which applies to whom, so your abandoned cart recovery emails should be one-size-fits-all.

One idea is to have the first email act as a simple reminder. If the customer completes their purchase, they’ll be automatically taken off the email list, but if their cart remains abandoned, they’ll receive a second email with a discount code. A third email could be sent if one of the products in the customer’s cart was in danger of going out of stock. Others could be set up depending on the nature of your industry.

Since 3dcart comes with its own hosted email accounts, it has built-in email functionality other platforms lack — making it far easier to set up automatic campaigns. Plus, there are a variety of abandoned cart recovery apps available at different price points and levels of complexity. There’s also the excellent 3dboost app for modals, which lets you create fully-customizable boxes as described above.