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Preparing Your Abandoned Cart Strategy for 2020 and Beyond

December 19, 2019

Another year, another decade. A lot has changed in the world of ecommerce over the past ten years, and there’s still plenty more to come. In this week’s blog, we’re concentrating on preparing your abandoned cart strategy for 2020 and delving into the top six ecommerce trends to come. 

Ecommerce and consumer trends change drastically over time. Even within the past year, the volume of shopping done online, the devices used, and the time consumers will wait for delivery have changed. Those failing to keep up with these changes are seeing their businesses flop, with eCommerce failure rates topping 90% within 120 days this year. 

This is why your abandoned cart strategy must be responsive to changing consumer trends. And, now is the perfect time to reflect upon the past 12 months and prepare for the year ahead. 

If this is your first time creating an abandoned cart strategy, take a look at our three-part customer recovery blog series first. These three informative guides cover the essential components of creating a successful customer recover strategy, namely:

1. On-site campaigns for capturing ecommerce leads and driving conversions;
2. Recovery campaigns for recapturing abandoned sales; and
3. Customer recovery tools and tricks for boosting your results.

Ecommerce trends for 2020

Changing ecommerce trends can make a cart abandonment strategy win or fail. If your cart abandonment campaigns are targeting the purchase motivators of yesterday, they won’t be effective at saving or recovering abandonment today. Instead, you need a strategy that embraces change, meets current customer needs and predicts the trends of tomorrow. 

But what will the top ecommerce trends of 2020 be?

1. Rise of mobile commerce

Within the next year, mobile eCommerce sales will outperform desktop sales. This means that more than half of your purchases will originate from a mobile device, but that’s not all. Increased mobile spending means increased overall mobile use, and this has consequences for when and how customers engage with your brand on your website, on social platforms, and through email and messenger. 

2. Increased use of product videos

Video marketing has already seen a significant rise in interest, with 94% of businesses now viewing video as an effective marketing tool that generates serious ROI. Over the next 12 months, we’ll see the use of video content expand from home pages and social media platforms, onto the product page as a way for brands to showcase product use and engage audience interest. 

3. Preference for social

Social buying will be a hot eCommerce trend for 2020, as all the big social platforms up their ecommerce game. Making it easier and more seamless than ever for social media users to buy products while scrolling through their feeds, the number of consumers shopping this way will increase drastically alongside the growing number of social media users. 

4. Expectation of speed

The consumer need for instant gratification isn’t going to change, but what consumers define as “instant” will become a lot faster. Amazon is already offering 1-day Prime deliveries, and this will change customer expectations for speed, including deliveries, communication, and even purchasing. 

5. Automation

Automation technology is now more available and affordable than ever before, and this year we’ll see online retailers of all sizes taking full advantage. Until recently, automated technology has largely been used for customer benefit – making the purchasing journey easier and quicker. In 2020, ecommerce businesses will use automation and machine learning for their own time, profit, and knowledge benefits. 

6. Personalization

And finally, personalization will continue to rule the purchasing journey over the next year. Consumers are increasingly driven by personalized content, and 2020 will be no different. From marketing and customer service to payment options and packaging, customers will seek and return to retailers who treat them as an individual, rather than a number. 

Now that you know what to expect in 2020, it’s time to start tailing your abandoned cart on-site and recovery campaigns accordingly. 

Preparing your on-site recovery strategy for 2020’s trends

If you’re a regular reader of our ecommerce blog, you’ll already know (and hopefully be using) the top abandoned cart on-site recovery strategies. But to fully optimize your on-site campaigns for 2020, you can consider implementing the following. 

Live chat

With customer expectations for speed and personalization increasing, implementing an automated live chat plugin on your website enables you to target two trends in one go. Not only does live chat provide customers with quick answers to their questions, but by asking for an email address to initiate the chat, you can also use this information to fuel your post-abandonment recovery strategies. 

Top tips for adding live chat to your website include adding a delayed welcome message to offer customers help after a certain period, using chat representative’s photographs to personalize the experience, and using automation to answer common questions. 

Relevant offers

If you’re using delayed or exit intent popups to retain shoppers on your website, the above 2020 trends can ensure that you’re presenting customers with relevant and engaging information. 

For example, with speed becoming a significant purchase motivator, you can use popups for advertising your alternative payment options or offering super-fast delivery on orders over $25. Or, with the consumer preference for social media growing, you can use popups to offer a discount for those that follow you – saving them a few bucks while also giving you a new way to market to them organically for future purchases. 

Personalization

With personalization remaining a hot trend over the coming year, it’s important to think of different ways to personalize the on-site shopping experience, rather than solely personalizing your recovery emails. A great way to do this is by using push notifications that speak directly to your shoppers while they’re performing other tasks online. 

After a shopper has opted in to push notifications on your website, you can drip-feed targeted, clickable notifications that feel more personal than an email. For example, you could use messaging that references the shopper’s basket, sends them tailored offers, or merely remind them you’re there. 

Checkout flow

You aim for your checkout to be busy in 2020, therefore your checkout flow must be optimized for the flavors of the year. With mobile shopping increasing in popularity, you want to ensure that your checkout form is easy to complete on a mobile phone and that you offer mobile payments such as Apple Pay and Google Pay. For the other half of your customers who are desktop browsing, checkout speed is still crucial, and while a one-page checkout helps, your 2020 strategy can do better. 

Pro Tip: One surefire way improve checkout flow is to use a Form Autofill feature (like CartStack’s). Form Autofill will store any information added to your checkout page form (except payment info) and automatically repopulate the form with this data when your abandoned shoppers return.

By activating Form Autofill on your checkout page, you can increase checkout speeds by up to 30% while eliminating barriers to entry and reducing friction. This not only satisfies the customer need for speed, but it also helps keep those easily distracted customers from getting distracted again before they finish their purchase.

Preparing your post-site recovery strategy for 2020 trends

It’s not just your on-site customer recovery strategy that needs tweaking in readiness for the next decade of ecommerce. Your browse and cart abandonment recovery strategies also need to adapt to changing trends and demands. To achieve this, consider the following:  

Mobile optimization

With mobile phone use increasing, more people are using their smartphones to check their emails. Mobile opens now account for 46% of all email opens, meaning that your recovery emails must be mobile-optimized, without question.

In particular, this means:

• Using a subject line that grabs attention and encourages the reader to open the email there and then, rather than waiting until they’re on a desktop. 
• Ensuring that all images and links are suitable for mobile phones and don’t bog down loading time. 
• Using clear, engaging, and to-the-point text that can be quickly scanned on a phone. 

Further reading: Abandoned cart subject lines that get 40 – 70% more opens

Personalization

We talk about personalization a lot in our ecommerce blog because it’s a really useful tactic for recovering cart abandonment and driving conversions. If you’re looking for new ways to inject personalization into your recovery emails, alongside product recommendations and cart contents, why not consider the following:

• Including relevant product GIFs demonstrating product use and target the growing love of video;
• Injecting user-generated content about recently viewed items, that acts as social proof and targets the growth of social selling; and
• Using the contact and behavioral data gathered on their visit to personalize their recovery experience by repopulating abandoned forms once they return. 

Email content

With customer purchasing motivators changing with the seasons, it’s necessary to ensure that your content reflects the information most relevant and exciting to your audience. In particular, this year, you’ll want to focus your content on your shipping times, especially if you offer Amazon-like delivery speeds of two days or under. 

Other areas to focus your content on in 2020 include the different payment options you offer, especially ‘buy now, pay later’ methods such as Sezzle; your social media accounts; and the ability to buy via your app (if applicable). 

Automation

Finally, to really boost your recovery strategy in 2020, automation can help you to target and recover more abandoned visitors while saving you more time. Our blog has already covered fundamental abandoned cart automation, such as customer segmentation, product recommendations, and recovery email sending. Still, there are plenty of new and different ways to automate your business for recovery success. These include:

• Using inventory management software to auto-sync and maintain your stock levels, ensuring that anyone returning to your website can immediately purchase the product they were looking at. 
• Using an automated Facebook Messenger tool to remind customers about your website and answer common questions. 
• Automatically sending lost leads to your marketing email automation software, using Zapier. 

2020 – final thoughts

You don’t need 2020 vision to prepare your abandoned cart strategy for the year ahead. By being aware of up-and-coming trends, such as those mentioned above, and using this information to tailor your customer recovery strategy, you can maximize your conversion rates, while satisfying your customers’ new needs. 

If you want to know how CartStack can help to power your 2020 abandoned cart strategy, schedule a personal demo today.