The SaaS Hub’s Tips for Getting Back Abandoned Carts

It's scary for every store owner to know that about 70% of all online shopping carts are left behind before the checkout process is finished. This means that for every 10 sales you make, you probably lost about 23 potential customers who were interested enough to put things in their cart but then left at the last minute. You won't be able to get back all of these people, since some of them are just "window shopping." But getting back even a small number of them can boost your sales by 10% to 20% without spending any money on new ads. We call cart recovery "low-hanging fruit" at The SaaS Hub. The customer has already shown interest; they just need a little push.The first step to getting them back is to figure out why they left. The most common reason given by customers in surveys is "unexpected shipping costs." For example, if a customer sees an item for $20, goes to checkout, and then sees that they owe $35 because of shipping and taxes, they will leave because of the "sticker shock." Being open is the best solution. Show the shipping costs on the product page or give customers the option to set a "Free Shipping Threshold." You have to fix the communication if you can't fix the cost. Using The SaaS Hub's apps that figure out shipping costs in the cart drawer before you check out can help with this.The most reliable way to get your email back is still through email recovery. A regular "You left something behind" email is fine, but a series of them is better. You should send the first email within an hour. It should be useful, not pushy. "Did your Wi-Fi go down? We saved your cart." The second email, which was sent 12 to 24 hours later, gives social proof. "This item is selling fast." The third email, which you send after 48 hours, is where you might offer a small discount code (like 5% or 10%) to close the deal. But be careful not to make your customers wait for this coupon. Divide your audience into groups so that people who often leave don't always get the code.Push notifications are a newer, more aggressive frontier. You can send a message straight to a customer's browser or mobile screen if they have signed up for web push notifications through apps like PushOwl. These get more attention than email, but they don't last as long. They work best for immediate recovery; sending a notification 30 minutes after someone leaves gives the impression that something needs to be done right away. Because they don't get lost in a "Promotions" tab like Gmail, people often click on them more often, but the conversion rate may be a little lower than for email.Retargeting ads on Facebook and Instagram are like a safety net. If you have the Facebook Pixel installed (which every Shopify store should), you can show dynamic product ads (DPA) that show the exact picture of the item the user left in their cart. This keeps your brand in their minds as they scroll through their feed later in the day. Dynamic retargeting usually has the highest Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of any ad campaign type because the audience is so warm, even though it costs money (unlike email).Lastly, think about the "save for later" feature. A user may leave not because of the price, but because they aren't ready to buy right now. Keeping them in your ecosystem is easy if you let them move things to a wishlist or "save for later" list. The SaaS Hub has a number of wishlist apps that can let you know when an item you saved goes on sale or runs out of stock. This turns an abandoned cart into a future sale. You make a safety net that catches sales that would otherwise fall through the cracks by using all of these strategies together: clear pricing, email sequences, push notifications, and retargeting.