How to Recover Lost Sales (5 Expert Tips)

Are you looking for a way to increase your online store’s sales and engagement? If so, you may instinctively want to start generating new leads. While you should continuously strive to find new customers, don’t forget about the people that visit your website and then leave without placing an order.

Shopping cart abandonment is a massive problem in the eCommerce world. On average, 69% of people that add an item to their cart leave before checking out. As you can imagine, losing out on over half of your potential sales can quickly lead to lackluster engagement and performance.

The thing is, there are plenty of different ways you can recover lost sales. Our goal today is to go over techniques we’ve used in the past to convince visitors to come back to our website and make a purchase. We will also show you several on-site strategies you can use to persuade customers to stick around when they are thinking about leaving.

Let’s get started!

Offer Free Shipping + Perks

The number one reason shoppers abandon their shopping carts is due to unforeseen costs. We’ve all added an item to our shopping cart, only to navigate to the checkout page and see that the price doubled. If you’re like many of us, you left the site and didn’t return.

You can reduce instances of cart abandonment by simplifying your checkout process. One easy way to accomplish this task is to offer free shipping to customers that spend over a specific amount.

We recommend creating a banner on your product catalog so all new visitors can see how they can get free shipping. You don’t have to go all out; sometimes, a simple “Spend $50+: get free shipping!” is enough to turn someone on the verge of abandoning their cart into a customer.

Loyalty points are another perk you can offer visitors that may convince them to complete their order. You can choose how to reward your shoppers. Some businesses give cashback in store credit; others use a tally system that allows repeat customers to get free products. Analyze your marketing metrics and target audience, and develop an irresistible loyalty program that will keep shoppers coming back for more.

Show Live Sales Notifications

Next, let’s talk about how you can use social proof to reduce your abandonment rate. Simply put, social proof in marketing is a psychological trend where people are likely to take action if they see others doing the same thing.

There are many ways to stop people from leaving using social proof, including reviews and trust seals. There’s no doubt that these marketing strategies are effective, but we want to talk about live sales notifications.

Live sales notifications are popups that your visitors see when another customer performs a specific action. For instance, you may see a live sales popup that says “(customer) just bought (product)!”

These cues are an excellent way to convince people to follow through with their orders. If someone is thinking about leaving without completing their order, a sales notification from another customer could be the thing that convinces them to place their order.

Research shows that adding live sales notifications to your site can increase your conversion rate by 15%. In other words, fewer people will abandon their cart when you use this valuable sales recovery strategy.

Publish Content that Addresses Pain Points

Your blog is perhaps one of the best ways to stop customers from leaving your site. You may be surprised to learn that 47% of shoppers read 3-5 blog posts on a company website before purchasing a product. If you don’t have value-packed, personable content, you may see an increase in your abandonment rate.

Combine this information with the fact that 61% of people have bought a product recommended to them from a blog, and it’s easy to see why your content marketing strategy is crucial to your success.

We suggest creating content that resonates with the goals and pain points of your target audience. If you want someone to buy your product or service, they need to see how it will solve their problems or bring them one step closer to their goals.

Research your visitors and create broad content that touches on all of your customers’ major objections when they leave your site. You’ll notice that most shoppers that abandon their cart check company blogs first. Do everything you can to answer their questions and calm their minds with your blog, and you’ll see a reduction in abandonment.

Create Recovery Campaigns

Odds are, some of the people leaving without placing an order are already subscribed to your email list, social media, or push notification list. You can bring many of these people back to your site with a strategically timed recovery campaign.

The type of recovery campaign you create will vary depending on your marketing goals and industry. Email is a great way to reach subscribers after they leave their shopping cart. We create drip campaigns that last a week after a user leaves our site. We send out emails after 12 hours, 48 hours, and one week.

In each email, we include the product they left in their cart along with a special promotion. In many cases, this strategy results in people coming back to our site. Segmenting your leads based on their behavior can improve your open rate by 14.31%, and recovery email campaigns are not an exception to this rule.

 

Push alerts are another powerful way to stop users from leaving products in their carts. Research shows that if you implement push notifications correctly, you could see a reduction in your abandonment rate of 13.17%.

The key is to send enough alerts to remind users of their shopping cart without being too overbearing. Depending on your industry, you may want to follow the same pattern as an email recovery campaign. Send 3 push alerts to subscribers within a week of their experience, and you could see more people following through with their orders.

Review Your Google Analytics Data

You have to pay attention to your existing leads if you want your business to thrive. Look out for the signs of cart abandonment by reviewing your Google Analytics account and measuring your sales. The most important thing to note is the page where users are leaving your site.

If you notice a majority of your visitors are leaving on a specific page, don’t be afraid to dive in and find out what went wrong. You may have an issue with your loading times, CTA visibility, or engagement options.

We like to review our analytics every week, so we can identify trends early on and quickly find solutions. You can improve your cart abandonment rate by paying close attention to how users interact with your site.

Review your analytics and use some of the other tips we mentioned today, and you’ll have more opportunities to recover lost sales and grow your business.