Top 3 Hidden Cart Abandonment Insights From 514,719 Customer Text Conversations

Shopping cart abandonment is like napalm to every merchant’s revenue and a huge hurdle to scale for marketing ROI. 

With customer acquisition costs skyrocketing this 2021, you’re probably reeling from the amount of revenue that went unrecovered in the past 30 days.

So why don’t you flip the script?

The biggest mistake brands and marketers will make this year is not using their abandoned shopping carts to gain deeper and actionable insights about their customers. 

Let’s dive into the top 3 hidden insights on cart abandonment we gleaned from real shoppers, we’ll discover: 

• The Top 6 Reasons for Cart Abandonment (pricing isn’t one of them)
• How To Turn Abandoned Shoppers into Loyal Customers 
• Why Customer Empathy Should Be Your Marketing Focus this 2021

As a bonus, we’ll even share with you some lucrative strategies on how you can solve your cart abandonment rates this 2021 at the end of the article. 

Let’s take a deep dive. 

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment? 

Online shopping cart abandonment or cart abandonment is when a potential or existing customer adds browsed items to their shopping cart but doesn’t make a purchase. 

So wait, why is this bad news? People change their minds all the time. 

Aptly put, but a high rate of cart abandonment often points to underlying issues in your store or website such as poor customer experience (CX). 

And these are usually issues that you or your team can easily fix and hit a 35.26% increase in conversion rate! 

But trying to solve your cart abandonment rates with only quantitative data to rely on is just a short-term solution. When was the last time you spoke directly to the customer to find out what wasn’t working for them? We did. 

We just analyzed over 514, 719 text conversations with abandoned shoppers to find out the real reasons behind why they dumped their carts that your dashboards won’t tell you.

Abandoned shoppers are your hottest leads. They’re one step away from making that purchase— but didn’t. You only have a crucial 30-minute window to nudge your abandoned shoppers back to the check-out section to complete your purchase. 

So here are the 3 hidden insights as told by 500k over SMS conversations to equip yourself with this year. 

Ready? Let’s jump to it. 

#1: The Top 6 Reasons for Cart Abandonment

It may surprise you that why shoppers are abandoning their items has nothing to do with price. 

From our study of 500k text conversations with real abandon shoppers, the 6 most common reasons for cart abandonment were in fact because of:

1. Payment Issues
2. Unexpected Fees
3. Technical Issues
4. Long Shipping Times
5. Trust Issues
6. Lack of Product Information

Just take a look at the shopping cart abandonment rates on this Statista chart below. No one’s really cracked the code for eCommerce cart abandonment rates— it’s been relatively constant for 13 years. 

And if you compare our findings to the top result on the first page of Google:

1. Lack of trust
2. High shipping costs
3. Complex checkout process

Do you see the information gap here? And that brings us to our next point.

#2: How To Turn Abandoned Shoppers Into Loyal Customers

In a Salesforce survey, 54% of respondents felt that companies should transform how they interact with customers. 

As a brand owner or a marketer, your aim this year is to figure out how to deliver connected experiences over fleeting transactions to your shoppers and target audiences. 

If you need more convincing: 96% of consumers have said that the deciding factor when purchasing and completing an order is hinged on the quality of customer service of your Shopify Store. 

To achieve this, it’s about how you can effectively manage your customers’ expectations and how you should respond to them. Here’s a helpful checklist. 

8-Point Checklist on How to Respond to Your Abandoned Shoppers 

✅ Go omnichannel to close the gaps across multiple touchpoints of your customers’ journey— don’t just rely on a single channel

✅ Respond quickly and react appropriately to resolve their issues 

✅ Offer an effective solution in the first contact

✅ Timely resolution of the problem

✅ Value your customers’ time and feedback

✅ Know what a positive customer service etiquette is and stick to it

✅ Always provide accurate and honest information

✅ Personalize your communication: No automated bots

To effectively meet your shoppers’ demands, it’s time to buckle down and leverage your digital channels to communicate emotional intelligence and personalized experiences. 

Reducing your shopper’s profiles to statistics will hurt your brand strategy in the long run. 

Just take this tip for example: 

[QUOTE] “Customer experience” can’t be just a buzzword or something you want to improve… it has to be a business strategy that everyone is on board with and empowered to improve.

— Paul Davis, Founder & Head of the Board @ Mosi Tea

If you liked that piece of advice, check out more insights from 25 key players from DTC brands who shared why customer experience is the future of marketing in 2021.

This year, humanization is the new personalization— and talking directly to your customers is the next natural step for your brand. Which brings us to the next insight on our list. 

3. Put Customer Empathy As Your Marketing Focus For 2021

According to an annual report by Shopify Plus, the 5 trends predicted to be the future of eCommerce this year are:

1. eCommerce boom fuels record online competition
2. New consumer behaviors are reshaping future retail ✨
3. Fulfillment emerges as a competitive differentiator
4. Brand building challenged by marketplace dominance
5. Retention becomes a top priority as acquisition costs spike

In a nutshell, taking a customer empathetic approach can offer you insight into sentiments that numbers and statistics won’t show you.

Brand experience is proven to be directly linked to customer loyalty— it impacts how likely a customer is to return to your store and buy from you again. 

It’s a compounding effect on your revenue because a returning customer can bring 67% more sales to your store than first-time shoppers.

With this in mind, we recently reached out to 12 key players from direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands to share the secret sauce of how they built better customer experiences.

These are our 6 favorite tips:

• Your must-haves for returning customers: quick shipping, open communication, encouraging product reviews, and staying true to your brand promise
• Take note of both quantitative and customer data
• Make sure support is easily accessible 24/7 to your customers during their moment of need
• Automate how you respond to support tickets across SMS, live chat, email, Instagram DMs, or FB comments. You can use Gorgias for a quick response.
• The best way to get customer feedback is by speaking directly with your customers face to face
• Responding personally on social media—comments and DMs gives you direct insights into who your customers are and what they want from your brand

So, which channel should you use this year and tick all the right boxes above?

Use Conversational SMS Alongside Email to Solve Cart Abandonment 

Email marketing strategies have often been the tried and true channel for businesses to engage, sell and retain customers. 

But it’s not every year a new marketing channel appears. 

Using a two-pronged marketing approach with SMS marketing can help you hit the 4400% in email ROI that was promised. 

And the best part is, text messaging is a growing marketing channel with a low margin for error. It doesn’t compete and cannibalize the efficacy of your email campaigns.

But what it does do is pack on the urgency and provokes a response from your customers. 

Source: Cartloop

Here’s the 2021 way on how you should leverage SMS marketing as a lucrative sales and support channel:  

1. Initiate a conversation with your abandoned shoppers ?
2. Provide value through each text

1. Provide assistance throughout the entire shopping journey

As promised, here’s the bonus tip you can try out for yourselves to recover up to 5x more abandoned carts just from using a conversational approach. 

We’ll show you an example using an SMS-first approach. 

Use A Conversational Approach To Send Cart Recovery Texts

1. Automate a cart recovery text message to trigger 30-minutes after a shopper abandons a cart
2. Add some personalized touches to your message by introducing yourself, this alone already sets you apart from the usual bulk SMS sends ✨
3. Remind them where you’re texting from
4. Establish yourself as a point of contact for further assistance
5. Offer to understand their situation, and you’re there to help them find a solution
6. Incentivize and make it hard to say no; a discount, free shipping, or alternative payment options
7. Send them a shortened branded link to the checkout page
8. Guide them through the checkout process again

You could also take a human approach by choosing a conversational SMS marketing platform like Cartloop to engage your customers with human-powered 1:1 conversations alongside your email strategy.  

Wrapping Up

So that’s it, you’re probably a pro by now at cart recovery. But let’s jog our memory on the insights we covered above: 

• The top 6 reasons for cart abandonment have nothing to do with price at all 
• Use your abandoned shopping carts as a great opportunity to turn those abandoned shoppers into loyal customers with instant and good customer service
• Pivot your marketing focus this 2021 to adopt a customer empathetic approach to stand out this year

We even suggested some conversational text messaging strategies that you can easily implement by using an SMS-first approach this year for your brand strategy. 

Remember, a customer-centric approach will give you and your brand a competitive edge this year. It’s time to get to the root of shopping cart abandonment and knowing your customers better than anyone else.