Abandoned Carts on WooCommerce: Rates, Recovery, and Plugins

When a customer leaves an online store without checking out, their items are left in an "abandoned cart". This is usually caused by the customer not having time to complete the purchase, being distracted, or encountering an error on the site. While most abandoned carts are never completed, they can still be a major source of lost revenue for online stores.

Unfortunately, like any e-commerce store, WooCommerce is not exempt from experiencing online shopping cart abandonment. For WooCommerce, WordPress estimates that the rate of cart abandonment could be as high as 80%. That’s a ton of potential profit left on the table. So, to maximize your sales and keep your business trending in the right direction, getting on top of cart abandonment is a must.

Reasons for Abandoned Carts

Unfortunately, abandoned carts are a common occurrence in online stores. Why does this happen?

There are several reasons shoppers might abandon their carts, including:

1. A loss of interest in the items
2. The customer found a better deal on a competitor's website
3. Additional or unforeseen costs, like shipping rates, taxes, etc.
4. The customer experienced problems with the checkout process
5. A store’s shipping and handling fees are too high
6. The customer was not sure if the store was trustworthy

How to Recover Abandoned Carts

When a customer abandons a cart in your WooCommerce store, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, there are several ways you can go about recovering those carts and getting the sale, such as the following:

• Using a cart recovery plugin, like Addify
• A profit/revenue analysis, like that facilitated by BeProfit
• An email marketing platform, like Mailchimp

The average cart abandonment rate across all sectors is around 69.99%. However, adding plugins and tools to your store can be a good way to reduce this number.

• Email marketing campaigns and “retargeting” strategies can bring 3 out of 4 customers back to your site, and boost your chances of a conversion.
• According to WooCommerce, sending a simple follow-up email can help recover up to 30% of lost sales on their platform.
• Around 49% of cart abandonment messages get opened and 21% of them receive click-throughs taking them back to the site.
• 50% of users who click on a cart abandonment advertisement or email make a purchase eventually.

At the same time, tools for profit and revenue analysis and cart abandonment trackers can help you to pinpoint your most “at risk” customers, and determine which factors in your store may be increasing cart abandonment.

How Do Plugins Help Recovery Rates?

Specialized cart abandonment plugins can seriously help an online business’s recovery rates. They do this by leveraging these features:

• Purchase history Plugins provide the ability to react to cart abandonment by recommending items based on previous purchases.
• Payment portals The best plugins can even provide dynamic payment options, such as a discount coupon or free delivery.
• Email marketing If a customer is shopping for a specific product and then leaves the store, these plugins can land automated email-based recommendations for the same or similar products straight to a customer’s inbox.
• CRO optimization Some plugins will optimize your website for conversions, focusing on conversion rate optimization (CRO) best practices.
• Profit/revenue analysis The best digital shopping cart abandonment plugins will feature profit/revenue analysis capabilities. This allows online store owners access to valuable shopping cart abandonment statistics that can be used to reduce cart abandonment.

Best Abandoned Cart Plugins for Woocommerce

If you run a WooCommerce store, there are several abandoned cart plugins that can help you recover lost sales.

The best of these include:

Abandoned Cart Pro For WooCommerce

WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Pro plugin is the ultimate solution to recover abandoned carts and increase your overall sales. It will automatically email your customers and remind them about their abandoned cart, giving you the opportunity to convert a sale that would have otherwise been lost forever and features a fully interactive dashboard and WordPress widget. Plus, it will automatically delete abandoned orders after a specified number of days to prevent your dashboard from becoming cluttered.

Abandoned Cart Lite For WooCommerce

Abandoned Carts Lite is lightweight, easy to use, and will help you boost your sales and profits. Unlike the Pro version, this plugin is limited to a few features.

However, it will still send an email to the admin when an order is recovered and collects basic abandoned and recovered statistics that can be later viewed by the user. Although, the Lite version doesn’t collect customer emails, won’t automatically send recovery emails, nor allow users to access a full WordPress dashboard area.

If you can afford the Pro version, opt for it over the Lite one.

Use WooCommerce Plugins to Mitigate Cart Abandonments

WooCommerce cart abandonment plugins are a behind-the-scenes remedy that will work to improve your online business’ recovery rates. Such plugins can help keep customers onsite and reduce the likelihood of them abandoning their carts - cart abandonment emails being a prime example.

The best plugins for WooCommerce will also eliminate the chance of human error, making your online business more resilient to cart abandonment and profit loss than ever before.