Why did I lose so many purchases to cart abandonment last quarter? Is there anything I can learn from this? Most of us would immediately formulate a solution to keeping the buyer engaged thru check-out. How many of us would begin re-marketing that same buyer?
48% of “serial abandoners,” online shoppers who abandoned more than one purchase in the previous 28 days, will buy when remarketed, making this group 2.6 times more likely to buy than one-time abandoners, according to a December 2011 e-book from SeeWhy. “Recent goal abandoners,” defined as shoppers who have made one or more purchases followed by an abandon in the past 28 days, have the highest recovery rate, at 57%. Overall, 43% of the sample studied were one-time abandoners, while 42% were serial abandoners, and 15% were recent goal abandoners.
3 of every 4 New Visitors Who Abandon Will Return
Data tells us when new visitors abandon a shopping cart, very few, only 1 in 4 will not return in a month, which tells us that 75% of abandoners have some degree of intent to purchase and will return to the site to either abandon again or purchase. By contrast, when returning visitors abandon a second time, 53% will not return in a month. However, of the remaining 47% who return, 1 in 4 will make a purchase.
Abandonment Rates Spike at Key Price Points
The analysis shows that there are some key price points at which spikes in the abandonment rate occur: the $100 spike is the most significant with the highest volume, but we see similar spikes at $250, $400, and $500. Even a low value cart results in very high abandonment rates. SeeWhy believes as the ratio of shipping cost to the value of the basket approaches 100%, customers abandon their cart.
Real-Time Remarketing Has Huge Impact
SeeWhy’s analysis found that 8% of shopping cart abandoners returned without any form of remarketing, on average. However, the total return rate increased to 26% when a real-time remarketing campaign was added, with the impact on the return rate from remarketing greatest within the first 12 hours following abandonment.
Using customers that made a purchase “straight through” on an e-commerce site as a reference point, SeeWhy discovered that after receiving email remarketing campaigns, those that abandon their shopping carts spend on average 55% more than those who do not abandon their shopping carts. However, the high average order value did not apply to all remarketing campaigns: real-time remarketing campaigns, where the email was sent immediately following the abandon, generated 105% more revenue than the same email sent only 24 hours later. In fact, 30% more shopping carts were recovered by real-time email, and those campaigns also had a 66% higher average order value.
According to an October report from Econsultancy in association with RedEye, although the proportion of companies targeting shopping cart abandoners has decreased from 29% in 2010 to 26% this year, their response times have accelerated. This year 33% of companies that targeted a customer who had dropped off a sale did so within 1-4 hours, a 38% increase from the 24% in 2010. Likewise, the proportion of companies that waited one day or more to target a customer decreased from 49% to 43%.
About the Data: The SeeWhy data is based on a random sample of more than a quarter of a million (264,631) U.S. e-commerce transactions from July through August 2011. The transactions were distributed evenly across a wide variety of different e-commerce sites, with the majority in the Business–to-Consumer market. Overall, 617,247 individually identified e-commerce visitors were profiled as part of this research. In some cases, the sample size was smaller, and is noted on the chart.