Every business irrespective of its size or scale, endeavours to maximize its customer base. For this particular reason, businesses employ several eCommerce techniques to not just retain their existing customers but also to enhance the volume of their clientele. Cart Abandonment Journey Workflow is one such eCommerce technique, used by businesses worldwide to formally reach out to those customers, who expressed interest in purchasing their product or service, by adding it to the online shopping cart, but for some genuine reason, ultimately didn’t materialize the purchase. 

Businesses understand that when a customer abandons before finalizing a purchase, then that does not necessarily mean that the customer was not interested in purchasing the product in the first place. The reasons for a customer abandoning mid-checkout could be as varied as not having a credit card at the moment of purchase, having an intention to explore elsewhere for similar products or services in order to compare price and quality before making the final decision or it could be that the customer simply wanted to tour the website in order to make a purchase in the near future. 

Cart Abandonment Journey acts as a means to formally remind as well as encourage both existing and prospective customers to continue their purchase process from the point where they abandoned it. Additionally, this specific technique at times even helps businesses identify what exactly led the customer to abandon the purchase process.

Information such as this can then be leveraged by businesses to manoeuvre their marketing strategies to convince the customer to ultimately complete the purchase. For instance, if a customer abandons the purchase process after landing upon a page which displays the shipping price, then that customer can be offered a choice between free shipping and a discount. So, in many ways, a completely customizable and fully automated Cart Abandonment Journey is an indispensable and effective means to enhance any organization’s customer base.

Before You Get Started

The Cart Abandonment Journey gets triggered based on the customer’s activity on your e-commerce store. So, for the Journey’s successful deployment, it is imperative to ensure that your e-commerce platform such as Shopify is integrated with your NotifyVisitors account.

• The Cart Abandonment Journey can be triggered for known customers i.e all those customers whose email ID is registered in the NotifyVisitors database as well as for anonymous visitors at your online eCommerce store via Web Push and App Push notifications.

• All the pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journeys utilize email as the default channel (action) to remind & encourage customers to finalize their purchase.

• The user can customize any pre-configured journey in the Cart Abandonment Series to utilize other channels like SMS, WhatsApp etc. to communicate with the customers. Check out the link below to learn how to utilize channels other than email within a Cart Abandonment Journey.

   https://support.notifyvisitors.com/support/solutions/articles/84000370802-how-to-set-actions-in-journey

Types Of Cart Abandonment Journeys

NotifyVisitors provides certain pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journeys, each of which is a part of the Cart Abandonment Series. Each pre-configured journey within the Cart Abandonment Series utilizes the Checkout Update event as a trigger for its initiation. The user can choose to deploy any of the pre-configured Journeys with their default configuration or customize them as per the desired marketing strategy. 

The pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journey types are as follows: -

Standard Cart Abandonment Journey

• This is the most basic type of pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journey that lets you recover customers who left your e-commerce store before completing their purchase. It is configured to send two consecutive email reminders to the customers at specific time intervals. 

• The first email reminder gets sent 4 hours after the Checkout Update event gets triggered and in case the customer doesn’t respond to the first email reminder within the next 20 hours, then a second email reminder gets automatically sent. 

• The content, both textual and graphic, for both the email reminders is also pre-configured, but just like the entire Journey, this content can be customized by the user as per the marketing requirements.

Standard Cart abandonment Journey Workflow / Flowchart

• Although this Cart Abandonment Journey is linear and sequential, it automatically ceases if the customer responds to the first email reminder and finalizes the purchase. In this scenario, the customer will not receive the second email reminder.

High Value vs Low-Value Cart Abandonment Journey

• This particular journey within the Cart Abandonment Series is primarily focused on splitting customers’ data based on their abandoned cart’s monetary value. 

• The purpose of this bifurcation is to offer perks to only those customers whose abandoned cart’s value is above a specific threshold, in order to further encourage them to complete their purchase. 

• In other words, this kind of granular control enables businesses to offer discounts to only those customers whose overall purchase would generate enough profit margin to justify a concession in the net monetary value of the abandoned cart. 

• The monetary threshold can be customized and set to any value desired by the user. If the set threshold is surpassed by a certain number of customers who abandoned mid-purchase, then their abandoned carts will be treated as being high in value. 

• Customers whose abandoned cart’s monetary value is above the set threshold, would in turn receive distinct email reminders, mentioning a percentage of discount on their overall purchase amount, in comparison to those customers whose abandoned cart’s monetary value is below the set threshold.

High Value vs Low-Value Cart Abandonment Journey Workflow / Flowchart

• All customers irrespective of their abandoned cart’s monetary value will receive their first email reminder, once 4 hours expire after the Checkout Update event gets triggered. 

• In case customers don't respond to the first email reminder within the next 20 hours, then a second email reminder will get sent automatically. 

• The content, both textual and graphic, for both the email reminders is pre-configured, but the entire Journey and the content of the email reminders can be customized by the user as per the marketing requirements.

• Just like the Standard Cart Abandonment Journey, this journey too automatically ceases if the customer responds to the first email reminder and finalizes the purchase.

Standard Email & SMS Cart Abandonment Journey

Nowadays, a vast majority of customers use smartphones, by means of which they can view emails as well as SMSs, while they are on the move. So, encouraging customers to finalize their abandoned purchase, using two channels instead of one, not only enables businesses to timely reach out to them but also enhances the probability of getting instant responses, which in turn maximizes the businesses’ turnover.

• The Standard Email & SMS Cart Abandonment Journey is designed to send email as well as SMS reminders to customers who abandoned their cart mid-purchase. 

• This Cart Abandonment Journey is pre-configured to check for customers who are reachable via SMS, once 4 hours expire after the Checkout Update event gets triggered. Those customers who are reachable via SMS are sent an SMS reminder, and those who are not, are sent an email reminder rousing them to materialize their purchase.

• Additionally, those customers who do not respond to the first reminder (SMS or email), receive a second email reminder, informing them that their abandoned cart is nearing termination, once 24 hours expire after the Checkout Update event gets triggered.

• This means that those customers who are reachable via SMS but do not respond to the first reminder will receive an SMS reminder 4 hours after abandoning their purchase along with an email reminder after 24 hours have passed.

• On the other hand, those customers who are unreachable via SMS will receive two consecutive email reminders, one after 4 hours have passed and another after 24 hours have passed after they abandoned their purchase.  

Standard Email & SMS Cart Abandonment Journey Workflow / Flowchart

• Standard Email & SMS Journey ensures that each and every customer gets notified twice about their abandoned cart. Sending two reminders instead of one & using two channels instead of one, raises the likelihood of receiving instant feedback from customers and completing the purchase order.

• This Journey bifurcates into two sequential pathways and it automatically concludes if the customer responds to the first reminder, either by SMS or email and finalizes the purchase. In this scenario, the second email reminder does not get sent after 24 hours.

How To Create And Customize Cart Abandonment Journey?

Each of the pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journeys within the Cart Abandonment Series can be customized by the user as per the desired marketing strategy. In other words, the user can pick up any one of the Journeys within the Series and redefine event triggers, channels, exit conditions, and time delays as well as customize the content (both textual and graphic) of the reminder messages.

In order to customize a Cart Abandonment Journey, the user must first create one. In order to create a Cart Abandonment Journey, the user needs to follow a series of steps. The common steps to create all Journeys within the Cart Abandonment Series are as follows: -

1. Navigate to NotifyVisitors Dashboard> Journey> Create New Journey.

2. Select any one of the pre-configured Journey Templates of the Cart Abandonment Series by clicking on the               ‘Customize’ button.

3. In the pop-up that appears on-screen, provide a label or name to your Journey by typing it in the ‘Journey                 Name’ box. 

4. Within the same pop-up, click on the ‘Trigger’ dropdown and select the ‘Checkout Update’ event.

5. Click on the ‘Create Journey’ button.

Important Note 

The High Value vs Low-Value Cart Abandonment Journey is exclusive to e-commerce platforms and a prerequisite needs to be fulfilled in order to deploy it. The prerequisite is that you will be required to configure the Checkout Update event as a trigger in order to run this Journey.

Once a Cart Abandonment Journey is created, the user can customize the Journey by: -

1. Configuring the Exit Conditions & Time delays.

            Exit Conditions

• Each Journey within the Cart Abandonment Series has a default cancellation trigger named Order Place. The primary purpose of this trigger is to define the conditions when a customer would automatically exit the journey. 

• This specific event gets triggered either when the customer fulfills the purchase upon receiving a message reminder or when the customer has received all the message reminders set within the Journey but hasn’t yet materialized the purchase.

• The customer can be at any specific point within the Journey, but once this event gets triggered then irrespective of how many more steps exist within the Journey’s Flow, the customer will automatically exit the Journey and all the remaining steps within the Flow will be skipped or bypassed.

            Time Delays

• Setting adequate Time Delays for the first reminder and then for the subsequent reminders, is crucial for the success of any Cart Abandonment Journey. This is because the customers should not feel like they are being pestered with frequent and recurring purchase reminders.

• Inadequately defined Time Delays can have a negative impact on the overall Journey, no matter how good its Flow is designed. Improper Time Delays can cause the customer to become disinterested in the product or service and in extreme cases, can also lead the customer to form a negative opinion about the product’s brand.

• On the other hand, setting precise and planned Time Delays can have an overall positive impact on the success of any Cart Abandonment Journey. Adequately timed notifications, implicitly convey to the customer that the company simply intends to remind the customer about their abandoned cart and by sending a reminder, it is genuinely fulfilling its responsibility.

• Moreover, instead of being hasty and forwarding a notification immediately after the customer abandons a purchase, it is a good practice to space your reminders with sufficient time intervals since you want to give your customers enough time to complete their purchase before determining whether or not they should be sent a subsequent reminder.

As a best practice, NotifyVisitors pre-configures its Cart Abandonment Journeys to forward the first reminder 4 hours after the customer abandons the purchase process and subsequent reminders at a time interval of 24 hours. However, you can always customize the Time Delays for the first as well as any subsequent reminders as per your desired marketing strategy. 

2. Adding, removing, and customizing the Event Triggers & Actions.

             Triggers

• An Event Trigger is a feature within a Journey which allows the user to determine how a Journey will proceed onwards based upon certain actions performed or not performed by the customer on the e-commerce store integrated into your Notifyvisitors Account.

• Each of the pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journeys utilizes a default event trigger namely Checkout Update, for their initiation. This specific event gets triggered in an eCommerce platform like Shopify, whenever a customer performs a checkout without materializing or fulfilling the purchase.

• You can, however, add, delete, define & customize only one trigger i.e the main event trigger, as per your desired marketing strategy, for any of the pre-configured Cart Abandonment Journeys in the Series. In order to learn more about setting up triggers within a Journey, check out the guide in the link provided below: -

  How To Set Triggers In Journey: NotifyVisitors

             Actions

• Actions are primarily the means through which you can communicate with the customers to deliver the intended message. Actions include a variety of channels or media that can be used to reach out to customers. 

• Since each & every customer is not reachable via email, other communication channels may be required as alternatives to convey important product-related reminders. In addition to email, NotifyVisitors provides many other options that our users can employ to communicate with the customers.

• Furthermore, NotifyVisitors provides its users with granular control over various marketing strategies which could be employed to make reminders more attractive and meaningful to the customers. 

• Users can add discount coupons, include clickable buttons which redirect to the customer’s abandoned cart web page etc. Users are also provided with various in-built editing tools which enable them to design & customize the message reminders. Check out the link below to learn more about Actions.

            How To Set Actions In Journey: NotifyVisitors

3. Customizing the textual and graphical content of the reminders

As previously stated, the content, both textual and graphic, of the message reminders can be customized by the user. Customizations provide organizations with the freedom and flexibility to design reminders as per their desired aesthetic and marketing requirements. Organizations can create personalized reminder templates and save them for future use which in turn simplifies and streamlines their workflow.

• Every organization has its own logo, colour scheme, fonts and communication style. Nowadays, organizations don’t just want to deliver a reminder, but they also want it to uniquely represent their brand’s identity. 

• This is one of the many reasons why NotifyVisitors provides the flexibility to add brand-specific graphics, fonts, interactive content and other modifications that vibe with the organization’s design scheme.

• Customizations are provided not only to refine the message reminders on an aesthetic level but also to tweak them on a strategic & functional level. Users can design & include discount coupons, add clickable ‘Complete Your Order’ buttons which redirect to the customer’s checkout web page, perform split testing, set reminder delay times and perform many more functional tweaks. 

Recommendations For Designing Your Cart Abandonment Journey

Here are a few suggestions from NotifyVisitors that might prove useful while you design or customize your Cart Abandonment Journey.

What language should be used?

The way you phrase the headlines of your reminders and the textual content of your messages makes all the difference between a customer getting instantly tempted to respond or feeling completely apathetic towards even acknowledging the reminder.

The language used in the reminders should be such that the customers feel that the company is genuinely concerned to remind them about their abandoned cart and not primarily about making profits. The language used should encourage customers to not hesitate and reach out if they have any questions about the company’s products and inspire a valid sense of urgency to complete their purchase. For instance, you could phrase your headlines as "Hurry, head back to your cart now! Your discount expires in 24 hours!".

Additionally, it is a good practice to include your organization’s contact information within the reminder to make it easy for your customers to contact you in case they have any questions pertaining to their purchase or in case they encounter any issues during the purchase process.

When to include discounts in reminders?

Discounts are an effective way to lure customers back to their abandoned carts. So, it is quite common for organizations to include concessions in their Cart Abandonment Journeys. However, such incentives should be offered wisely and only under certain circumstances such as when the customer doesn’t respond to the initial reminder or only when the customer has never purchased anything before from the company’s online store.

It is not a good strategy to offer discounts right away in the very first reminder, since this can lead customers to take advantage of this practice by abandoning carts on purpose in order to avail discounts. In any case, if you feel an incentive should be provided, then it would be better if you withhold your discount offer until the final reminder.

What products to include in the reminders?

It is a good practice to mention only those products in your reminders that customers abandoned in their carts. We recommend not to have other products mentioned, displayed or highlighted in your reminders since your primary goal is to drive customers back to their abandoned carts in order to materialize their purchase. 

Intentional inclusion of products other than those present in the abandoned cart can implicitly convey to the customers that the company’s primary goal is to generate profits by marketing more of their products instead of genuinely reminding them about their abandoned cart. Moreover, including other products can distract customers from the main message and deter them from even reading the message reminder thoroughly which in turn could lead to an overall low conversion rate.

Ensure that you save and publish your Cart Abandonment Journey in order to deploy it successfully.