Because the emails you’re sending could be reaching 5x more people if they were actually abandoned cart emails. Right now, you might be thinking “that’s just a word choice, what’s the difference?” But it matters, a lot. Unbeknownst to most people, those “abandoned cart" emails are actually just “abandoned checkout” emails. But there’s a pretty big problem with this approach. The most common solution is to set up “ abandoned cart emails” that are automatically sent to shoppers who had an item to their cart but don’t make it through the checkout stage. And in other cases, we start on one day and finish the job on another.Īs online merchants, we need to recognize that this is completely normal behavior for a human choosing to spend their hard earned money with us.Īs merchants, that leaves us with the challenge of making it as easy as possible for people to finish the purchase no matter when or where they fall out of this journey.
Sometimes we make it from beginning to end in one session. Pretty straightforward, right? As consumers, we all buy things online and have gone through this process dozens (or hundreds) of times with online retailers. Buy: They confirm their purchase and pay for the item(s) they have selected.Checkout: The shopper begins the process of checking out by entering their shipping and payment information.Add to Cart: The shopper is interested enough to add an item (or more) to their shopping cart.Shop: That person starts poking around, looking at your products to see if you have anything they want at a price they are comfortable with.Visit: A person comes to your online store for for the first time to see what you sell and what your business is all about.Search: Most online purchases start with a search or engaging with an advertisement on Facebook or Instagram.Sometimes this happens in multiple visits, sometimes in a matter of moments, but everyone goes through it. Get our best content on ecommerce marketing in your inbox 2 times a week Understanding the buyers journeyīefore we dive into solutions, let’s take a quick look at a normal buying path ( marketing funnel) for an online shoppers.