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Reducing Abandoned Carts on Your Ecommerce Site

Are dipping sales and abandoned carts getting you down? Around 75.6% of shopping carts were abandoned in 2018, but there's still hope. Here are some top tips for ecommerce sites to increase conversions and supercharge sales today using today.

Josh McEwan
By Josh McEwan   |  

 Sep 13, 2018

There's nothing worse than watching sales dip and abandoned carts skyrocket on your ecommerce site. Here's the good news: if you’re struggling with sales optimization you’re not entirely alone — a striking 75.6% of carts were abandoned in 2018. It’s clear that there’s real potential value in re-engaging these leads, nurturing them into customers, but how can you get started with this? 

Take a look at some of our top tips for ecommerce sites when it comes to conversion optimization and leading nurturing. Using these tricks, you’ll be able to supercharge your processes today.

1. Evaluate Your Site

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) takes time but is incredibly worthwhile. It's a fact of life that leads will abandon shopping carts, but a regular CRO can help you target problem areas making sure that when people exit from a cart it's not because your site sucks.

When we carry out CRO, we look at:

  • Payment options: People like having options they're familiar with. For example, having a PayPal button can increase conversions by up to 34%)
  • Checkout options: Having guest checkout options can also improve conversions.
  • Number of checkout pages/steps: You can reduce abandoned carts by up to 26% just by making checkout faster.
  • Checkout page content: Pricing, shipping costs, and the amount of information you ask for can all influence conversions.
  • Technical issues: Maybe your site isn't working the way it should, perhaps it's not optimized for mobile purchases, or the site speed is super slow. These are all things you should dig into using a Google Analytics.

Once you've optimized your site checkout pages, you're ready to address the large percentage of people abandoning those shopping carts because they just aren't ready to buy.

i'm not ready

2. Automate Your Emails

It’s no secret that a large number (around 46%) of people will open an abandoned cart email. A further 35% or more will them complete a purchase after reading it. For ecommerce and Magento stores, if you’re not already automating your abandoned cart emails and sending these to potentially lost customers, you're already losing a lot of revenue.

Setting up automated emails is incredibly easy using CMS software like HubSpot, which can be integrated with Magento and other ecommerce platforms to supercharge your sales and marketing.

How to set up a HubSpot Workflow for Abandoned Cart Emails

Go to Automation -> Workflows (or Contacts -> Workflows depending on which version of HubSpot you're running)

Select 'create workflow'

Your new workflow will be 'contact based'

Select 'start from scratch'

Remember to name your workflow (at the top) for ease of reference. Name it after what it does. In this case, call it something similar to' Abandoned Cart Email'

Select 'set enrollment triggers'

Your triggers are going to be abandoned carts. Depending on your site, you can set this up one of multiple ways. The easiest is to base this on smart lists, that are linked to page views.

For example, create a smart list that searches for leads who have viewed www.examplestore/checkout/page2 but not www.examplestore/checkout/success. So they have viewed the checkout page but did not complete a checkout. Call this smart list 'Abandoned Cart Leads'.

If you have a smart list, in enrollment triggers select 'list membership' and your abandoned cart list.  

OR

If you have certified custom Magento developers on your team, they may have set up a custom contact property for you instead. Select 'contact property' and choose the custom property. They will have named it 'Abandoned Cart Step' or something similar. For checkouts with multiple cart steps this can be especially useful.

NOTE: you can test whether your triggers are working by selecting 'calculate number of contacts', if a contact is known to have abandoned a cart you can also test this by selecting 'test criteria' and choosing their contact record

Next select 'add an action' and choose what you want to do with your abandoned cart lead.

We would recommend your first action is a delay. These people are clearly not ready to buy from you right now and adding a delay also makes the automation feel more human.

Now hit 'add an action' and select 'send email' under the marketing subheading. You will be prompted to select an email that you have saved for automation in HubSpot.

Remember to select a goal for this Workflow so that contacts are eventually removed from it. Click on 'set goal' in the top left corner. 

When a goal is met, the contact will be un-enrolled from the workflow. So, for an Abandoned Cart workflow your goal is for them to complete a purchase. This might be a url (for example: www.examplestore/checkout/success) or this might be existing in a smart list you have created for customers.

You should also consider suppression of certain lists (your employees, for example, or certain customers) and whether you want to remove contacts from other workflows when they are enrolled in this one. This option is available in the Workflow settings under 'Unenrollment and supression'

In settings you can also decide whether this Workflow will execute 7 days a week versus only on business days, and which times of the day you'd like it to work as well.

Once you make this workflow live, it will start to enroll contacts. 

Remember to make sure you don't have conflicting workflows running with this one. For example, if you are sending these contacts an abandoned cart email should you also be sending them a generic marketing email on the same day?

3. Actually Nurture Your Leads

Look, the number 1 reason customers abandon carts is that they’re not ready to make a purchase. We’ve all been there, idly adding things to a cart before payday and considering our options and then not having the time or money to commit to that fabulous winter hat.

When somebody abandons a shopping cart, hope is not lost. In fact, this is your chance to step-up and outshine your competitors. You should use your abandoned cart emails as a chance to re-engage your leads and nurture them through the sales process with relevant and targeted information. 

Your emails should be smart and personalized — 94% of businesses agree this is critical — but they should also be creative and representative of your brand. This is your chance to shine, and put an appropriate amount of pressure on your leads. Too much, and you might lose them altogether. Too little, and they might never return.

Jack Wills Abandoned Cart

Make sure at least one of your abandoned cart emails in your HubSpot Workflow or automated email sequence actually contains your abandoner's old order. Your Magento or ecommerce developers should be able to easily set-up this email template for you by creating an email that will customize based on order, location, and when the cart was abandoned.

4. Make Your Emails Timely & Relevant

Once you've set up your automation it's easy to go a little overboard with this stuff. I'm here to tell you to put down the mouse, step away from the keyboard, and think before you start sending out emails every hour of the day, multiple times, to the same person.

The most engaging content speaks directly to the needs of your audience, and solves the right problem at the right time. Users open, and click on links, because they can't not click on them.

Timing is just as important as content with these emails, so think carefully about when these emails will be sent via automation. While emails sent within a matter of minutes can have a higher conversion rate than emails sent later (5.2%), each industry is different. A person buying a $1 card might be ready within a hour to make a purchase — who hasn't bought a birthday card at the last moment? — but somebody who has abandoned a beautiful $7000 court shoe from their shopping cart might need longer than a few hours to weigh up their options. Likewise, somebody browsing your site at 3am might be best served at email later in the day when they're more awake (or maybe they're a night-owl who exclusively buys things after midnight).

Once you're sure about timings, in your email you should make sure you have:

  • a compelling subject line
  • personalization
  • a strong call-to-action
  • shopping cart details (optional but recommended)

Abandoned Carts 3

5. Closing The Deal 

So, how does one email take an on-the-fence lead all the way through to a sale? Incentivizing your emails is going to elevate your conversion rates and get you that conversion. Magento store owners should consider offering the following features in their emails: 

  • Discounts, coupons and sale notifications
  • Similar items to those in the cart, or different material or color options for what they have
  • Delivery times and options (maybe your lead didn't realize you can rush orders, for example)
  • Testimonials and reviews

There are many Magento extensions on the market that can help you do these automatically, saving you time and money.

casper abandoned cart

 6. Check Your Working

It never hurts to ask an expert to check your thinking, working, Magento store set-up and HubSpot workflows.

At Meticulosity, we're a diverse team of experts. Our dedicated, certified Magento developers work alongside HubSpot COS developers and certified HubSpot marketers on many of our ecommerce sites. All of this means we can offer a uniquely complete service — ecommerce web development coupled with inbound and digital marketing from a team with over 100 years combined experience. We can offer you advice, and the solution, all in one agency.

Contact us for a free consultation today, and supercharge your ecommerce sales and marketing strategies.

Josh McEwan

Josh McEwan

Josh helps create optimal marketing and growth solutions for new clients. He brings a decade of full-funnel marketing experience.

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