Purchases made online during the Thanksgiving and Black Friday increased by 17.9 percent in 2017, and reached a staggering $8 billion in sales. Most stores are expected to see an upsurge in traffic during Black Friday this year too, and e-commerce businesses are already underway planning discount coupons, deals, and clearance sales.
Yet, an unexpected outcome of upsurge in holiday traffic is an exponential increase in the number of abandoned carts. Holiday shoppers often add items to their cart, but do not proceed to check out for a number of reasons.
In this article, let us take a look at 6 tips for you to avoid cart abandonment this Black Friday.
Last Black Friday, Americans spent a record $5 billion in just 24 hours, notwithstanding what was sold on Thanksgiving. Many shoppers admitted that last minute deals enticed them more than deals that had been promoted over previous weeks.
This effect can be traced to a psychological phenomenon called the recency effect. People tend to remember what was told or shown to them in the recent past than information they viewed or heard in the distant past.
This means, it makes sense for you to engage in last minute promotional campaigns over social media, email, etc. Offer novel discounts, shipping waive-offs, and creative ways to cross-sell and up-sell products by putting various products into single hampers.
46 percent of shoppers revealed that they would never shop on a website that is slow, and that if they encountered a website that didn't load quickly, they would not return to shop again.
This means, if your website is slow on Black Friday, which it will be, due to extra traffic, your shoppers may abandon carts and never come back again. To avoid this scenario, make sure that you engage in some housekeeping.
Fix your website's SEO, disable unnecessary pop-ups, upgrade to the latest software and plug-ins. In fact, consider doing a complete web maintenance before the holiday season even begins.
Psychological research shows that if there is a sense of urgency, people feel motivated to act action.
Emails with urgency-words have a 59% higher transaction-to-click rates than average marketing emails.
This data indicates that instilling a sense of urgency about certain products, and conveying scarcity of the same, can motivate people into taking action without abandoning carts.
To instill a sense of urgency, revamp your web copy and campaign content. Use action-oriented phrases and convey a sense of scarcity, which makes people think that it is a now-or-never moment. Red, royal blue, and orange are colors that evoke a sense of urgency as well. Try to use them in your design.
Transparency is highly crucial for e-commerce success. If you display discounts, make sure that you display only the right discount amount. Hidden charges, extra shipping fees, etc. can turn off customers from checking out, resulting in higher abandonment rates.
You can also remind customers that time is running out to purchase certain products, or that only a few pieces are available. You can connect your inventory management tool to automatically display the number of discounted products available.
This creates a transparent situation, where customers will know how many products are available, and what their shipping costs would be.
You will be shocked to learn that 69% of customers abandon their shopping carts despite all your efforts. One way to reduce this rate is by making the checkout process simple and quick.
Do not urge the shopper to enter too many details, and make it easy for them to enter their payment details and checkout. Instill confidence in your customers by displaying security certificates.
Holiday season or Black Friday is not the time for you to waste time in collecting unnecessary information about your customers. Just their billing address or email address should be more than enough. Rest of the information can be collected once they checkout.
56 percent of shoppers abandon carts due to unexpected shipping and other costs. The device they use can also play a part in why they abandon carts. Regardless of the reason, just because they abandoned their cart does not mean you should give up.
Remarketing helps people to remember that they left something in the cart, and many people return to the same store to checkout if their products are still in the cart.
You can immediately send them retargeting ads and engage in remarketing, so that they return to the website and complete checkout. Develop ad copy strategically, and insert a CTA to complete the checkout in a single click.
Certainly, Black Friday is one of the busiest days for online stores.
Unfortunately, too many stores compete with each other, and they all provide attractive discounts.
If you do not make sure that your customer checks out quickly, they may simply go to another seller or not purchase anything at all. Use the tips we have described above to make sure that your cart abandonment rate reduces drastically this Black Friday.
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