Abandoned shopping carts represent one of the largest problems for online retailers, with an estimated $4 trillion worth of merchandise left in virtual shopping carts each year. But with the right tools, stores easily recover a significant portion of those abandoned sales. In this article, we will explore the reasons behind abandoned carts, the different methods available to combat them, and what to look for in a Shopify abandoned cart app. We will also highlight seven of the best Shopify apps to help solve this issue in 2023.
Abandoned Carts on Shopify: Why do they happen?
Understanding ecommerce and consumer behavior is the primary job of the Baymard Institute which specializes in ecommerce user experience research. According to their multi-decade study, the top 10 reasons for shopping cart abandonment (in order of importance and impact) are:
- High extra costs, such as shipping and taxes – 67.45% of shoppers abandon their cart due to unexpected high costs found during checkout
- Your website loaded too slowly – 46.1% of shoppers abandon due to slow loading times
- Your checkout process was too long and complicated – 35.26% of shoppers abandon due to a complicated checkout process
- Customer not ready to purchase – 27.89% of shoppers leave because they were just browsing
- Your website crashed or had technical issues – 25.20% of shoppers abandon due to technical difficulties
- Customer couldn’t find a coupon or discount – 24.6% of shoppers abandon due to lack of discounts
- Your return process was too complicated – 21.8% of shoppers abandon due to complicated return process
- Customer forced to create an account before purchasing – 20.26% of shoppers abandon because they prefer to checkout without creating accounts
- Customer unable to see the total cost upfront – 19.28% of shoppers abandon due to hidden costs
- Customer did not trust the website – 18.9% of shoppers abandon due to lack of trust in website
Source: Baymard
Your customers may encounter multiple reasons why they want to abandon their cart, this list represents the most frequent reasons found in Baymard’s findings.
The trick for stores like yours is to remove these objections from your customers through changes to your checkout, your website workflow, and reaching out to provide assistance during the buying process. One of the most powerful ways to do this includes using a Shopify abandoned cart app. But what should you be looking for?
What makes an app the best abandoned cart app on Shopify?
Ability to create messages easily
In order to perform cart recovery, you have to reach out to your customers and convince them to come back to complete their purchase. That always involves something like:
- SMS messages (texting)
- Popups
- Browser notifications (push notifications)
The most common (and effective) of these is email. But writing emails yourself from scratch is both cumbersome and time consuming. The best Shopify abandoned cart apps will allow you to:
- Create the content easily, using tools like Drag-and-drop editors
- Edit the content easily, with clickable elements in the email to change fonts, colors, size, spacing and more
- Have a wide variety of components available to make the email interesting, such as buttons, videos, image and text blocks, and so on.
- Allow you to rearrange the content quickly to get the best look without a lot of work
Collect ways to reach out to customers
If you’re going to send messages to your customers, you also must have a way to contact them. Sending email or SMS messages requires that you know their email address or mobile number to reach out effectively.
The best abandoned cart apps on Shopify allow you to:
- Collect emails and/or mobile numbers
- Already know how to get the customer’s information to contact them (e.g. Facebook or WhatsApp integration)
- Gather the information without making the customer perform too many extra steps (e.g. integrate with other email collection tools automatically)
If you plan to use email and SMS, you’ll want a way to collect both email AND mobile numbers at the same time. Popups work very well for this, but be careful not to use separate popups for email vs. mobile numbers as this tends to annoy customers.
Multiple message campaigns allowed
Sending messages to your customers is critical, but not as critical as following up with them after the first message. Reminders (best practices recommend up to 3) tend to increase revenue in a massive way for cart recovery. CXL reported on cart recovery from three different stores with campaign recovery per message. The results are staggering.
Of their four example, their second example from Legion Athletics showed that having 3 campaigns (over just a single one) more than doubled the amount revenue recovered:
And another from Peak Design showed even more impressive results with just TWO emails:
Our own results at Recapture show similar results as well. On average, the store that sends 3 campaigns instead of just a single one will make between 153-231% more revenue on their cart recovery. The demo account on Recapture (with live, but anonymous, data) demonstrates this very nicely:
Another example from Recapture is this pet supply store, which did very well with their 3-email abandoned cart series:
The data speaks volumes here: Make sure your app can send multiple messages to follow up with customers about their abandoned cart. The money is in the follow up.
Customer segmentation
The ability to send distinct and unique messages to your high value customers is also super important for any Shopify abandoned cart app. Customer segmentation, or the ability to send a message to a specific person based on data about them, makes a huge difference in conversion rates and revenue recovered for abandoned cart apps. Research and data both clearly demonstrate that using the right message, to the right person, at the right time, is significantly more effective than a generic message sent to everyone.
Segmented campaigns can:
- Make consumers 80% more likely to purchase (Source: Epsilon)
- Increase transaction rates up to 600% (Source: Experian)
- Boost sales by 3-5% (Source: McKinsey)
If your Shopify abandoned cart app cannot target messages to customers based on purchase amount, products added to cart, purchase frequency, or other demographic and psychographic data, then it will fall dramatically short in cart recovery compared to other abandoned cart apps that can.
Easy to read reporting/analytics
Having good data is one thing, but being able to read it clearly and draw obvious conclusions is far more important. Your Shopify abandoned cart app should be able to provide clear access to tracking data regarding abandoned carts, and most, if not all of the following data:
- Open rates
- Click rates
- Conversion rates
- Revenue per message (email or SMS)
- Bounce rates
- Unsubscribe rates
- Complaint rates
Graphs should have clear labels, flexible time frames, and accessible colors to view complex data in a simple manner. Both graphs and tables of data should be available for you to view, as well as export the data for your own internal analysis.
Data should be summarized as well as broken down by campaign to make it easy to make decisions about which campaigns are most effective and which need additional work.
Excellent customer support
Having all of the features in the world is great, but what happens when something goes wrong? Or if you have a question? You also need the ability to contact a real human being who can help you in a timely manner, with complete & appropriate information. You don’t want to be stuck in a ticketing system for days, or get handed off to five different people to solve a simple question.
In addition, having excellent documentation is critical as well. A well-linked set of articles, with searchable keywords and up-to-date information will make self-service a breeze and reduce frustration for savvy merchants who want to get it done quickly on their own.
7 of the Best Shopify Abandoned Cart Apps To Recover More Revenue
With all of that said, let’s take a look at several recommendations for best abandoned cart apps on Shopify and why you might want to use them.
1) Recapture
What it does
Recapture is an abandoned cart recovery and email marketing app that sends cart recovery emails and SMS along with supporting popups to gather email and mobile numbers. In addition, Recapture also supports post purchase email campaigns like review reminders, upsell/cross sell, welcome campaigns and winbacks. Trusted since 2015, Recapture has recovered over $225,000,000 for merchants worldwide.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- Supports email, SMS or a mixture of both campaigns together
- Drag and drop email editor with lots of useful widgets (buttons, video, image blocks, etc)
- Popup support for add to cart, page-based popups with multiple triggers (timed, scroll intent, page views, etc)
- Supports additional triggered emails (post purchase, winbacks) and promotional emails (broadcast)
- Easy-to-define customer segmentation
- Discount support for global and unique coupons both
- Simple reporting and clear analytics
- Highly rated, 5-star customer support
Why you might like it
One of the most complete apps on this list, Recapture has a lot to offer stores here. Whether you want to use email, SMS, or pop ups, Recapture has them all bundled in one convenient package. With a long history of recovery, amazing customer support, and hundreds of millions recovered for merchants, you can’t go wrong with Recapture.
2) Push Owl
What it does
Push Owl sends notifications to your customers while they’re on your store in their desktop or mobile browser. These highly-visible, almost-impossible-to-ignore notifications will catch customers’ attention and convert them into paying customers for high-volume stores. Customers don’t have to open anything or switch devices to use them, making them very simple for customers and lucrative for your store.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- Strong reporting and clear analytics to track campaigns
- Push notifications posted during the shopping experience, reducing time to action and hitting customers at the time of highest buyer intent
- Segmentation to target campaigns based on customer demographic data
- Send multiple messages to customers from a pre-defined sequence
- Excellent customer support
Why you might like it
Push notifications are one of the most effective ways to convert customers that are close to purchasing when they’re most likely to do it. These notifications are particularly effective with mobile users with their device size constraints. If your audience is mobile-heavy, push notifications might be a significant win for you.
3) PingMe Facebook Messenger Chat
What it does
PingMe puts a live chat widget connected directly to your Facebook account on your store, giving you access to talk with customers live on your site. You can also message them using Instagram, and have scheduled “office hours” so your customers know when real humans are around to ask questions.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- Integrates with Facebook Messenger (free) and Instagram messenger (paid)
- Can set office hours for clear times when human chat is available
- Supports cart recovery through widgets you can add for automated campaigns through FB messenger
- Higher paid tiers allow you to send email follow ups as well
- No Code solution which is great for non-technical store owners
- Excellent customer support
Why you might like it
PingMe supports popups and FB messenger chat on its free tier, which is quite useful for budget-crunched stores. If you want cart recovery, you’ll have to upgrade to the full paid plan. For sites that connect heavily with their audience on Facebook or IG, this app is a clear winner.
4) WhatsApp Abandoned Cart by Dab Commerce
What it does
Send messages through WhatsApp to your customers for cart recovery, order notification, collecting reviews and more. Engage your mobile-friendly audience easily using this app.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- Supports cart recovery via WhatsApp messaging
- Can send messages manually for recovery and promotion as well
- Supports multiple agents simultaneously
- Works directly in the Shopify Admin
- Excellent customer support
Why you might like it
WhatsApp is the most popular communication platform outside of the US in a number of countries (India, South America in general, etc) and if your audience lives there, you can’t live without this app.
5) Tidio Chat
What it does
Tidio supports chatbots, in particular, several types for cart abandonment. Similar to push notifications, Tidio tries to interact with customers while they’re still on your store. You can use chatbots with Smart Exit Intent to trigger specific cart recovery messages or chat with them directly.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- No Code Setup: Chatbots are configured via drag-and-drop and don’t require coding skills to set up.
- Chatbots prebuilt: Tidio has several options for prebuilt chatbots, including cart recovery options.
- Supports cart abandonment emails and chatbots both
- Excellent customer support and long history of support (since 2015)
Why you might like it
Having robots reach out to your customers may sound sketchy, but Tidio’s chatbots do an excellent job of balancing automation and personalization. They are an excellent, cost-effective choice to support automated chat recovery for abandoned carts on Shopify.
6) Picreel
What it does
PicReel gives your store the ability to create exit intent popups that appear as your customers are most likely to leave. This gives you a chance to bring them back with a discount or other offer using well-designed pop ups to save lost sales.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- Lots of pre-designed, high-converting templates available to pick from
- A/B testing allows you to try out different offer combinations to see what works best
- Solid reporting tells you if your pop ups are working or not
- Hundreds of integrations available
- Trigger on lots of different events, sending the right popup to your customers depending on their behavior (cart abandonment, upsell, or email collection)
Why you might like it
Having control over pop ups and the triggering events makes a big difference between annoying customers and convincing them at the perfect moment. PicReel’s app does a great job of staying on the right side of that tricky line.
7) Shopify Email
What it does
Shopify Email is the email marketing solution directly integrated into Shopify stores. Available at a nominal cost to merchants, Shopify Email is a great entry-level solution for stores just starting out on a budget. Send fees are as low as $1 per 1000 emails sent.
Abandoned Cart App Recovery features
- No additional integrations required–fully connected to your Shopify store
- Includes some templates to get started quickly
- Dashboard showing abandoned carts embedded in store. Can manually send messages if needed.
- Checkout recovery included. Can add cart recovery as another flow, if desired
- Cheapest option for email inside of Shopify for automation
Why you might like it
If you’re just starting out, or have a tight budget with basic needs, Shopify Email will get the job done for your store at a price that most merchants like. It’s a very basic solution–not a lot of choices with templates or customizations, unfortunately. As you grow, you might want to consider a Shopify Email alternative that can scale with your store better with less complexity.
So what’s the best Shopify abandoned cart app?
The answer, of course, is that it depends on what your store uses for reaching out to customers. If you are Facebook-oriented, a Facebook Messenger App would be ideal for cart recovery.
Need just a popup? Something like Picreel could be the perfect fit with cart recovery or cart abandonment triggers. Looking for push notifications only? PushOwl would be a great choice to add.
Similarly, if your store prefers email and/or SMS along with pop ups to build your email list, Recapture might be the best Shopify abandoned cart app for your situation.
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