Abandoned Basket
Any potential customers who have completed the checkout form but not made payment are considered to have ‘abandoned’ their basket. For each abandoned cart the abandoned cart app generates a unique link that you can use to encourage customers to recover their cart and complete payment. The app can automatically send out these emails depending upon your settings.
To install the abandoned cart app select from the menu. Find and select the 'Abandoned Cart' app and select INSTALL THIS APP.
When a customer abandons their cart the order is saved on your account as an unpaid order. To manage these orders, retrieve abandoned cart links and configure the abandoned cart app’s settings select from the menu.
• Obtaining the unique link
• Changing settings for automatic emails
• Configuring the content of the automatic emails
• Abandoned carts and voucher codes
Obtaining the unique link
On the ‘Your Unpaid Orders’ page you will see each unpaid order and whether or not the order is eligible for a unique link and to receive an automated email. Orders won’t be eligible if:
- The customer has subsequently made a purchase
- The customer has created another abandoned cart
- The product(s) associated with the order are no longer available
- The cart had a reward points discount applied before it was abandoned.
To obtain the unique link for a customer’s abandoned cart select the link icon under ‘Abandoned Email’ for each eligible order:
Clicking this icon will open a new screen where you can copy the URL to send to the customer:
Changing settings for automatic emails
Alternatively, you can choose to have automatic abandoned cart emails sent to your customers. To do this select Abandoned Cart Settings in the top right corner of the ‘Your Unpaid Orders’ page:
The following screen will then appear:
Here you can choose your settings. You can choose to send the initial email either 1, 2 or 3 hours later. You can also choose whether or not to send a follow up email either 6, 24 or 48 hours after the first email.
Finally, choose if you want customers who have responded ‘no’ to the marketing consent question to receive these emails.
Warning!
With GDPR legislation in place you may wish to consult with a legal professional to ensure you are operating within the law when sending these emails. Additionally, click here to read ShopWired’s GDPR guidance for abandoned baskets.
Configuring the content of the automatic emails
Upon installing the app the contents of the automatic emails will be preloaded. You can change the contents of the emails at any time by selecting from the menu. Under ‘Website Emails Content’ you will see a list of all of the emails that your account can automatically send to customers. Find the emails named ‘Abandoned Cart (Follow Up)’ and ‘Abandoned Cart (Initial)’:
Click on the one you want to adjust the content for, and you will be able to change the email subject and the email content in either HTML or plain text form:
If you are drastically changing the content of the emails, you will want to include the variable order.abandoned_basket_url somewhere in the email to ensure the URL that users can use to recover their cart is still there.
Select save changes when you have finished changing the content.
Click here for more help with configuring your website’s automatic emails.
Helpful tip!
Including a voucher code (such as 5% off) in the abandoned cart email can help you increase your conversion rates from these emails.
Abandoned carts and voucher codes
When a customer applies a voucher code (or has a voucher code automatically applied) to their order and then abandons their cart, the prices of the products in the abandoned cart email might be different to the prices that your products are on your website. This happens because the discount they received when entering the voucher code had already been applied to those products when they abandoned the cart. So when the abandoned cart email is sent out the products reflect their price with the discount still applied.
Typically, because a voucher code has already been applied to the cart, your customers will not be able to apply another one upon recovering their cart. The exception to this is voucher codes which are for a shipping discount. If you set up a voucher code as a shipping discount, the customer will be able to re-enter that voucher code when they recover their cart and it will be applied to their shipping costs.
Automatic discounts
Voucher codes which are set up as automatic discounts cannot be reapplied to an abandoned cart when it is recovered. This is true for all types of voucher code discounts, including shipping discounts.