If you’ve been in the eCommerce sector long enough, you are well aware of the universal problems all store owners face – getting customers over the finish line of the conversion funnel. In fact, the average Shopify cart abandonment rate is a whopping 68.53%. If you are near that red area, you must revamp your strategy and take action! Luckily, there is a conversion optimization solution like no other – cart abandonment popup messages.
Customers opening carts and adding items indicates that your products are of quality and that they pique customers’ interest. However, if you are not shipping those items, it’s a clear sign that something during the checkout process stands in the way of a successful conversation.
The right use of popups can help you naturally guide prospects and potential customers to the end of your conversion funnel and set yourself up for an opportunity to delight them as they proceed toward the final step of the checkout process.
And that’s just scratching the surface of the potential pop-ups can help you unleash on your site, with millions of other possible applications. Let’s dive deep and explore the best checkout optimization strategies that will help you mark 2023 as a successful year.
Understand Your Customers
Understanding what customers need will help you stock your inventory with products they adore and help them shop the way they want.
Some customers want to make seamless purchases without registering, and you should grant them that freedom. Forcing clients to shop as you intend them to will end up in abandoned carts and high churn rates. To avoid this, first, pinpoint what kind of customer journey you would want to experience. You can take it from here and start building a more pleasant and engaging process.
What Makes Customers Take Action?
Strive not to just be successful for yourself, but to be of value for your customer! Regardless of what it is exactly that your website sells, there are certain points of the customer journey you have to pay attention to. Customers have specific needs, and as a store striving to ensure that no prospect drops out of the sales funnel process, you have to deliver a valuable experience worthy of being covered in marketing classes.
Points To Keep In Mind:
- Customers don’t want to pay more than they expected for shipping costs. As a matter of fact, Shopify reports that more than 80% of consumers expect to receive free shipping when ordering a certain dollar amount of products, while others, or 66% to be exact, expect to receive free shipping on all the items they order online. Now, this is a trend you can get behind to give prospects a better and more frugal shopping experience, which is what everyone loves – high-quality products on their doorstep, delivered without a penny paid for shipping. And no matter if you’re providing free-shipping or not, it shouldn’t be a surprise either way when they get to the final stage of checkout!
- Clear product descriptions increase conversion rates. If customers know exactly what you are offering, they are more likely to proceed to checkout and complete the purchase. Include clear and concise descriptions of your products and use a bulleted list to outline the features your products possess.
- Address the ‘Lack Of Trust’ problem. Potential customers need to know that others have purchased your products and are now enjoying the benefits of that purchase. Include testimonials on your home page and encourage customers to leave their honest reviews so that everyone interested in your products can take a look at that piece of social proof and make a purchasing decision.
- Avoid distractions. The only distractions shoppers should have are exclusive discount codes or free shipping deal incentives. Other than that, the checkout journey should be clean and easy to navigate through. Display the real prices of your products and avoid hidden costs, giving prospects a true virtual shopper experience. And, if you want to make their experience extra special, sprinkle in a nice incentive to create a sense of urgency.
How To Uncover Customer Behavior
Want to get insider info on what your customers want? Go straight to the source by asking them directly or use heatmaps and analytics as a shortcut. Either way, you’ll get the valuable insight you seek to help improve website conversions.
You can amass customer feedback through surveys and by going over the reviews they generate. Don’t be surprised if you encounter brutal honesty coming out of the customer reviews posted online. But don’t let that discourage you. Use the positives to embellish what is already perfect and use the negatives to make the right tweaks and deliver something unique, something that will encourage your prospects to finalize the deal and receive their shopping cart items.
On the other hand, heat mapping software tracks users’ visits and their click behavior through your website and provides you with valuable visual feedback without a hitch. The data you gather from your heat mapping software will enable you to better position ads and promotions, see which areas of your page garner the most attention, and, finally, review click-through rates on your call-to-action buttons. You’ll also be able to see rage clicks, where visitors are clicking repeatedly on your website but it’s an unclickable element, that can help you improve your website design and find other ways you’re subtly blocking your customers actions through UX!
Cart Abandonment & Exit Offer Messaging Options
Even the most optimized checkouts suffer an abandonment rate of 20%. While 20% is nothing compared to the sky-high average of 69.99%, even the slightest improvement can result in higher conversion rates or, in other words, a boost in revenue. To ensure that the checkout is a success, you can rely on exit offer popups.
However, more often than not, eCommerce stores miss the cue by deploying ads and cart abandonment popup messages too late in the game when they’re already set on exiting. You’ll want to find the right time for cart abandoners and just exiting traffic to still manage to catch their eye but not so early you interupt their process.
This is why expert conversion rate optimizers developed something called exit behavior technology. This technology tracks the mouse movement of the website visitor and fires a promotion just as the prospect is about to leave. In such a case, presenting prospects with a discount or a free shipping deal might help you incentivize them to come back and take a look at the tempting offer and reconsider their choice. Adding more value to their purchase will spark the right desire and help them take their desired action.
Let’s walk you through some of the best exit popup practices and messaging you can leverage:
- If a shopper is idle on the checkout page, deploying a popup that carries a countdown timer might be the best and only solution to prompt them to take action during this session. Think of discounts and freebies they’ll be missing out on if they don’t complete their order within the time limit.
- While we don’t think you should wait until they’re already checking out to mention that BNPL or Shop Pay is an option, it is definitely a good value-add for cart abandoners. Let them know that they can afford their contents with four easy payments or checkout without having to get up for their wallet with a one-click log-in. These payment providers are so popular with customers that many say they won’t shop at stores that don’t offer them!
- If you want to be proactive and prevent abandoned carts before they even happen, look at your analytics. Find the average number of pages traveled before exiting, and then trigger an exit offer one page before then with a great deal or incentive to spark their interest.
- Alternatively, you can target exiting traffic in general or browse abandoners, those who looked through your website but haven’t added anything to their cart yet. One of the best strategies we’ve seen is to offer them a product finder quiz (great for those with products that require deeper consideration like expensive luggage or hard-to-choose variations like makeup & the right shade). This not only provides more value to the visitor (education) at this moment, but a discount likely wouldn’t phase them since they don’t even know enough to add something to their cart. But it also is an invaluable resource for collecting first-party data to inform everything from re-targeting ad campaigns to product development and beyond. If you don’t have or want to implement a quiz though, you can simply show them a carousel of your best sellers or direct them to that product category page. If anything if going to catch their eye at this point in their journey, it’s one of your most popular items! Both of these are great, non-discount-related exit strategies for browse abandonment visitors!
- If you were able to obtain the shopper’s email or SMS and the above strategies don’t work, you can play the waiting game and target them a few days later by sending them a cart recovery message either via SMS or email. Alert shoppers that they have abandoned their cart, and if they are quick enough, they can receive something nice that comes along with the product they order. Cart abandonment recovery emails might work better as you will have much more room to play with in terms of copy and personalization options. Even better? This kind of messaging can be automated so shoppers receive a dynamically personalized email, and your team doesn’t have to lift a finger.
Personalization Matters
Just firing your cart abandonment popup at the right time will not suffice. You need to find a way to engage customers at the checkout in a more meaningful manner, encapsulating that their experience matters more than their transaction. This is where personalization comes into play.
On that note, did you know that 73% of consumers prefer brands that offer personalized experiences? Pop-ups are a great way to give customers a more personalized online shopping experience through your entire store’s site. By requesting information like name, email address, or even birthday, you can send tailored offers to customers that match their individual interests.
And the same can be applied to the checkout process. Gather shoppers’ data with the help of popups and present them with something you know will provoke action on their end. Still, you don’t have to wait until a shopper reaches the checkout page to offer them an incentive. Capture their data by offering them coupon codes as incentives and ensure that they remain in your sales funnel as long as possible.
But besides your offers, your pop-ups should also receive personalization treatment. For example, if that particular shopper has registered on your site, you can deploy a pop-up message in which the shopper is addressed by their full name to make the offer feel like it was designed specifically for them. Lastly, use pop-ups that carry an incentive fitting the basket value of that particular shopping cart.
While you want to offer an unparalleled customer journey for shoppers, you can’t expect to give out a $25 gift card to each individual that proceeds to the checkout page. Instead, reserve good incentives for those that fill their shopping carts to the brim. That being said, don’t fret; even the smallest freebies or brand swag, such as keychains and coffee mugs, can get the job done.
Offer A Special Incentive
Speaking of incentives, it’s not always about prices and exclusive deals. Sometimes, you just have to relay the right information to shoppers. According to Statista, many cart abandoners are discouraged from taking the final step due to unclear return policies.
Use your pop-up messages not just to offer special deals, give shoppers a better experience by relaying valuable information to them and addressing some concerns such as these. You can either opt for reviews/testimonials or use trust badges to showcase your professionalism and dedication to creating the perfect customer journey for all those that visit your eCommerce store.
Use banners during this time to communicate important information about refunds or satisfaction guarantees—this transparency will build trust and confidence in your brand, which is especially key for first-time customers.
Banners are non-intrusive, and therefore, they won’t take a single point off the existing user experience while providing necessary information!
Essential Design Practices For Exit Offer Pop-Ups
Since pop-ups take the leading role in the entire process of reducing cart abandonment rates, we’ve decided to compile the most successful online shopping cart abandonment pop-up examples and tell you how you can get your popup game right to the T!
- Make It Contrast and Add Pleasing Visuals
By making your cart abandonment popup messages massively differ from your checkout’s page background, you can bet your money that your promotions won’t go unnoticed. Combine it with a solid incentive, and that shopping cart will be on its way to the customer as soon as it’s filled.
But an incentive is not the only thing your exit offer popups should carry. Present your popups in the perfect light by using clear and positive messages and captivating shoppers’ attention through stunning visuals.
However, don’t forget to grant shoppers complete freedom through their entire customer journey. Always have a clear, obvious close button on your pop-ups to allow users to enjoy the shopping experience the way they want to.
- Mobile Device Users Deserve Love
Those who understand the desktop and the mobile experience are completely separate reap great benefits in all fields, not just in eCommerce. You need to treat mobile shoppers with the utmost care, as even the slightest imperfection can tarnish their experience on your site. Everything from size to presentation needs to be scrutinized and optimized for perfection. Make sure to not have elements covered up by your pop-ups, that they can be easily closed, etc.
You don’t have to be a professional popup maker to deliver such an experience for shoppers. You can fall back on Justuno’s library of captivating templates and design studio to deliver a magnetic experience for mobile users and draw them closer to a purchase.
- Offer More
Your checkout exit offer popup incentive needs to be completely different from the other incentives your offer prospects through your site. They have to be richer in value and idiosyncratic. Sideline your usual incentives and offer something special for shoppers that have proceeded all the way to checkout.
For example, if your welcome offer is 10% off, make your cart abandoner 15% off. If it’s the same thing they already had access to or can come back again to claim, there’s nothing incentivizing them to checkout right away!
Conclusion
Optimizing your checkout process will, without a shadow of a doubt, increase your conversion rates drastically. You can easily do that with the creative use of popup messages and by presenting them the right way.
Above, we discussed some of the best methods to deploy cart abandonment popup messages and if you are interested in using these conversion boosters, don’t hesitate to sign up for a free 14-day trial with Justuno and unlock the full potential of your checkout process.
