Conversions and abandoned carts

Conversions and abandoned carts

What does conversion mean?

In terms of online marketing and e-commerce, conversion is the term used to describe the act of converting a visitor/customer in to a paying customer. A marketing tactic that encourages the customer into taking actions, precisely encouraging people to buy and complete the purchase from your shop.

Conversion rate represents the number of customers that actually bought something out of the total number of visitors.

But what is a good conversion rate? If you're already achieving 3%, 5% or even 10% conversion rates, is that as high as you're going to go? But what is a good conversion rate? Across industries, the average landing page conversion rate was 2.35%, yet the top 25% are converting at 5.31% or higher.

What are abandoned carts?

One of the most hated terms in the world of e-commerce is abandoned cart. 

Customers just add products to their shopping carts and when looking at their order summary on the cart page decide to abandon it due to various reasons (shipping costs, hidden costs, changed their mind...etc).

So after knowing these terms it would be easy to assume that a lower rate of abandonment results in a higher conversion rate? Yes it does.

Read through: Step by step Beginner’s Guide for Generating Online Business Leads

But how to reduce the abandonment rate you may ask yourselves.

Here are a few ideas:

  • Create urgency by telling customers to hurry up before they miss the deal
  • Offer discounts or free shipping to abandoned carts if you know the customer details
  • Skip the cart page and move directly to checkout

Almost anyone can fall for the "buy now or miss the deal" tactic. Even if you do not have any discounts or special deals, just by telling the customer they have a limited time to complete the purchase will result in a conversion.

Shopify cart page countdown timer

This is a cost-effective and simple way of increasing conversion rates and reduce abandoned carts. 

After the countdown ends it is up to you to decide what it should do. You can empty the customer`s cart making him believe he actually missed that offer, or you could do nothing. Just put a time of 20-60 minutes (no one will ever stay that long) and after the timer reaches 0 just let it show 00:00.

Shopify users can find an app that does just this on the app store called Cart Countdown Timer.

If you do know other simple strategies for improving conversion rates, please do leave them in the comments bellow and we will discuss more on them.

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