Cart abandonment is the number one reason your business does not achieve a good conversion rate, in accordance to the money you invest in advertising and marketing strategies. This has been an ongoing problem since online shopping came into being.
A research company called the Baymard Institute published a list of annual cart abandonment statistics going back to 2006. The average abandonment rate for this period of time is 69.23%.
Before you Act, Understand why Prospects Abandon Carts
It makes sense to know this, because the remedy must be adequate to fix the problem. The same Baymard Institute put together a comprehensive set of statistics showing the top reasons why people abandon their online shopping carts:
- 61% extra costs—shipping and handling, sales tax, other fees;
- 35% having to create an account in order to complete the purchase;
- 27% overly complicated checkout processes;
- 24% inability to see or calculate the total cost up-front.
Distraction is also a key reason, although survey respondents will not frame their answer like this. People usually start their search for a product on a device, such as their laptop at work, and finish it on their smartphone or tablet at home. If their browsing experience is not similar from one device to another or they are unable to find the contents of their shopping cart easily, they will simply abandon it.
How can Retargeting Ads Help you Close more Sales?
Retargeting ads are more than just reminders for prospects. Their key role is to smooth out any asperities in the decision making process and convince the prospect that this is the best deal they can get. Here are a few ways in which you can achieve this:
- Use Adequate Psychological Triggers
You already know about adding a sense of urgency to your ad copy, or to imply that this is an exclusive offer, available for just a few people. However, you must remember that people receive dozens if not hundreds of “special offers” every day.
Your retargeting ad must be special in the sense that it contains the exact trigger the prospect is most likely to respond to. This is why you should schedule your ads carefully (more about this below) in relation to the moment when the prospect visited your website and put the products in the shopping cart.
- Create Schedules According to Trigger Behaviour
The recommended frequency of retargeting ads is between 17 and 20 times per month. However, setting up the frequency is not enough. You must have a clear timeline from the moment the prospect placed the products in the shopping cart, continuing to the first retargeting ad, which should be shown to the prospect within the next 12 to 24 hours. If you exceed this timeframe, chances are that the prospect will have made a purchase from one of your competitors or else completely lost interest in the purchase.
- Showcase your Products in Superb Photos in Ads
When you are not able to offer a special discount (free shipping, for instance), you can still make some prospects go through the entire checkout process by making them lust for the product. How do you do that? With exceptionally good looking product photos.
When people stop an online shopping process, one of the things going through their minds is whether they need the product. This is the logical part of the brain taking action and interrupting the emotional decision making. However, emotion finally conquers, and you can help it a lot by showing your prospects what they are missing in your retargeting ads.
- Always A/B Test
A/B testing is one of our mantras in all our articles where we discuss advertising. And we will say it again: A/B testing is the only process through which you will be able to create high conversion ads and save money. Trial and error will cost you a lot of dollars if you send the wrong ads to the wrong people at the wrong time.
- Know when to Stop with a Burner Pixel
The success of the first sale is not really a success if you cannot retain the customer for a longer time. One of the reasons why people stop buying from a company is the fact that they keep seeing retargeting ads even after they made a purchase, showcasing the same product they bought.
Setting up a burner pixel will stop the retargeting ad campaign as soon as the order is placed. This piece of code will save you a lot of money spent on ads and will also enable you to retain more customers by advertising to them in a timely manner.
Click Here if you would like to learn how to set this up for your own store.