Combating Mobile Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment has been increased nearly 20% over the past 7 years. Artisan details three ways to decrease cart abandonment in mobile apps.

Ported Post: This entry was originally published in the Artisan Mobile blog. Artisan was rebranded as In-App Marketing after being acquired by TUNE in July of 2015. 

Cart abandonment has been increased nearly 20% over the past 7 years. BI Intelligence reported that the average online shopping cart abandonment rate for 2013 was 74%. This translates into a mindboggling $4 trillion worth of merchandise abandoned.

The increasing rate of cart abandonment is partially attributed to the shift in browsing habits from web to mobile. Consumers shopping on mobile have high expectations set from years of browsing on the web. When shifting to mobile, these consumers are easily frustrated and disappointed by poor mobile experiences. These poor mobile experiences can drive an increase in cart abandonments, a decrease in customer brand loyalty, app uninstalls, and most importantly, a loss in sales.

Fortunately, there are several ways to combat cart abandonment. In fact, BI Intelligence suggests that 63% of the $4 trillion worth of merchandise abandoned is recoverable – assuming the retailers are savvy enough.

So, how can you be savvy enough to recover your piece of the cart abandonment pie?

1. Remind consumers to complete their purchase.

It sounds obvious, but marketers often fail to take advantage of the huge benefit that a simple reminder can have. Listrak reports that “Initial emails, sent three hours after a consumer abandons a cart, average a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate.” Driving 20% of consumers back to the cart that they abandoned can be a helpful tool for marketers. For mobile cart abandoners, the same effect can be achieved with a push notification campaign. Create a segment of users who have abandoned carts and trigger a personalized push notification reminding the potential buyer of their unfinished purchase.

2. Optimize the bottom of your mobile app’s purchase funnel.

Another option to combat cart abandonment is to prevent it. Successful marketing teams have spend years tweaking and tailoring and optimizing their website’s conversion funnel to combat cart abandonment and increase revenue. Mobile apps, unfortunately, have not seen the same dedicated attention. It’s time to minimize mobile cart abandonment by optimizing the purchasing process. You can get started with simple tests, such as changing the location of the checkout button to make it more prominent. Artisan recently published a free eBook detailing important top, mid, and bottom of the funnel KPIs and A/B testing ideas to help improve your conversion rates and combat cart abandonment.

3. Understand your true cart abandonment rate.

Artisan recently surveyed 500 consumers about their mobile shopping trends, and found that 51% frequently or always make purchases by other means after browsing on mobile. These particular cart abandonments may not be costing you a loss of sales, but do highlight the importance of understanding your consumer’s complete purchasing process. If consumers are jumping between purchasing channels throughout the buying process, than providing a seamless, omni-channel experience will ensure that you are effectively preventing cart abandonment.

If you’d like to learn more about how Artisan can help you become savvy enough to solve your cart abandonment challenges, let us know. We’d love to hear from you.