Reduce Browse Abandonment for Increased Sales

Ecommerce purchase funnel leaks are a major source of loss of potential sales. The first step to resolving browse abandonment is understanding the Ecommerce purchase funnel. Essentially, this funnel has three stages where customers might leave:

• Browse abandonment: Customers leave while viewing products.

• Cart abandonment: Customers leave after adding products to their cart.

• Checkout abandonment: Customers leave during the checkout process.

If recovered, browse abandonment can lead to significantly increased revenue without additional CAC or marketing expenses. So, in this article from CRO School, we will delve into the nuances of browse abandonment and how businesses can combat it effectively.

What is browse abandonment?

Browse abandonment can be a tricky situation for online retailers. It's like having a customer walk into your store, look around at different products, and then walk out without buying anything. This can be disheartening, especially when you've put in so much effort to attract them to your store in the first place.

Consider this: According to a SaleCycle study, only 85.5% of sessions end with the buyer not adding even a single product to the cart. This is an alarming statistic, and it underscores the importance of effectively addressing browse abandonment leakages.

How to recover browse abandonment?

Recovering browse abandonment sessions by converting them into purchase events requires 2 things.

1. Knowing reasons why they happened

2. How to fix or workaround the reason for recovery

So below, we are sharing 3 major reasons along with their fixes.

Reason #1: Insufficient product details

One primary reason for browse abandonment is the lack of adequate product information on the product pages. Potential buyers often exit browsing sessions when they cannot find the necessary details about a product.

Research by Forrester reveals that 55% of buyers will abandon if they can't find the answer to a quick question. That's quite telling.

How to fix this

To mitigate this issue, enhance your product page details. Here are some actionable tips:

• Provide details like specs, size, variants, usage instructions, etc. This assists users in making informed decisions.

• Communicate shipping costs and estimated delivery times. This will address common concerns and prevent users from abandoning browsing sessions.

• Include customer reviews. It helps solve potential queries and instills confidence in the buyer.

How brands are doing it

Art of Time, a luxury watch brand, provides comprehensive product details, making it a noteworthy example. The product page includes every detail a buyer would want to know before purchasing.

Reason #2: Poor page experience

Slow-loading pages significantly deter a good shopping experience, leading to browse abandonment. In fact, there is a simple formula:

Speed = Revenue.

In fact, according to Google Research, a one-second delay in mobile load time can cause a 20% decrease in conversion.

Here are some more data points from Google/SOASTA Research, 2017.

How to fix this

To counteract this issue, ensure a smooth browsing experience with the following measures:

• Analyze page speed metrics regularly using tools like Google PageSpeed Insights and conduct performance tests to identify areas for improvement.

• Prioritise above-the-fold content. Also known as the critical window, loading it before third-party scripts and the rest of the page will provide a better user experience and improve page speed.

• Use WebP for images and WebV for animated content to reduce file sizes and speed up web page loading times.

Slow pages drive abandonment and churn. This is so crazy important. Google even trained a neural network to model this behavior and found that the probability of a mobile site visitor bouncing increases by 123% as page load time goes from one second to ten seconds.

-Alex Miller, Founder, FastMonitor.io

How brands are doing it

Here is an example of a slow loading speed that may adversely affect visitor experience. The various loaded frames at different times and seconds are shown.

Here is an example of a good loading speed and how the frames load at different times and seconds:

Reason #3: Pushy, irrelevant popups

Buyers get irritated when a horde of irrelevant popups greets them. Bad popup experience is caused by popups that.

• Cover the entire screen

• Appear immediately when a visitor lands on the page

• Show up in addition to other popups and static CTAs on the page

• Are irrelevant, pushy, and not helping in the buyer's journey

Google even warns against intrusive interstitial popups as a cause for poor search performance.

How to fix this

Creating user-friendly popups is the key to addressing this issue. Here are some tips:

• Use exit intent popups. Don't show popups instantly when the buyer lands. Also, test out the timing and delays.

• Ensure the popup content is relevant to the shopper's interests.

• Let users easily close the popup if they're not interested.

How brands are doing it

Ritualistic Home Decor uses an incentivized signup popup to give buyers a 'First order' discount.

Ritualistic, a home decor Shopify store, uses a user-friendly popup on its product page. It allows buyers to close the popup if they are uninterested.

Automating browse abandonment recovery

Even if you do all these, a visitor may still get distracted by a phone ring or a notification and leave.

There are too many distractions, no doubt. So, you need a mechanism to bring them back to the product, on to the cart, and finally, to checkout.

The easiest way to build such a mechanism is to use email automation. Email flows that do this are known as browse abandonment recovery flows. This triggers an email flow after every browse abandonment event.

What does a browse abandonment recovery flow look like?

A browse recovery email flow involves the following emails and actions:

1. The user browses through the website/app.

2. Send a browse abandonment email.

3. After 2 days, send an email suggesting similar products.

4. After another 2 days, send an offer email.

This flow helps, as it:

• Reminds visitors about the products they are interested in.

• Suggests more products similar to their interests.

• Encourages visitors to make a purchase.

How to set up a browse abandoned recovery email flow

To set up a browse recovery email flow, use your Email Service Provider (ESP) like Mailmodo, Klaviyo, Omnisend, etc. If you are a Mailmodo customer, you can easily set this up with:

• Pre-built automation customized with your brand assets.

• Interactive emails for higher engagement to drive sales.

Takeaway:

Browse abandonment can be a major obstacle for online retailers. However, with the right strategies, potential customers can be turned into buyers. Understanding the causes of browse abandonment and implementing effective strategies to combat it can significantly boost your online sales.

Stay tuned for our next chapter on repeat purchases; until then, happy recovery!