How to reduce cart abandonment on Shopify using popups

Exit-intent popups are displayed right before a customer leaves your store, and they can help you achieve the following:

• Encourage customers to finalize the purchase with a discount
• Convert abandoning visitors into email subscribers
• Ask abandoning visitors why they are leaving
• Display a contact form and offer assistance

Below, we’ll show you how to add a custom exit-intent popup to your store using Getsitecontrol popup builder for Shopify.

Before we do that, let’s quickly answer the following question 👇

What is considered an abandoned cart in Shopify?

An abandoned cart in Shopify occurs when a customer adds items to the cart but doesn’t follow through with the checkout.

In some cases, you may be able to prevent cart abandonment. In other cases, you may not be able to prevent it – but you may be able to recover an abandoned cart later via email or remarketing.

Whichever route you choose though, you’ll need to figure out why people abandon their shopping carts in your store in the first place.

How to reduce cart abandonment in your Shopify store

To prevent cart abandonment before it happens, you can offer a limited-time discount or a gift that will encourage customers to finalize the purchase.

However, to reduce cart abandonment in the long run, you’ll need to ask the abandoning customers for:

• Their emails — to be able to send an abandoned cart recovery email
• Their reasons for leaving without purchasing – to be able to optimize your store

For each of these three tactics, you’ll find exit-intent popup templates below.

1. Prevent cart abandonment by offering a discount

The number one reason for cart abandonment is the unexpected price. Sometimes, people are surprised by the total amount after they’ve added multiple items to the cart. Other times, the added costs such as taxes and shipping, end up being higher than anticipated.

When the final price becomes an objection, offering a discount is the best solution:

To add this template to your store, we first recommend adding the Getsitecontrol app to your Shopify website. Next, click on the template and follow the prompts on the right-hand side. You’ll be asked to sign up using your Shopify account, and once you do, the template will be added to your Getsitecontrol dashboard.

From there, you’ll be able to edit the color theme, image, and copy:

To edit the description and text on the buttons, just click on them and start typing. Keep in mind that both buttons in this example simply close the popup because the code of the coupon is available in the copy.

If you want to apply a discount upon a button click, you can assign an automatic coupon to the button.

To change the image, click on it and either choose another one from the built-in library or import your own creative.

Once you’re done editing the appearance of the popup, open the Targeting tab. The targeting settings allow you to specify when and where to display the popup.

For instance, if you want to display this offer in the shopping cart only, find the Include field, proceed to add a new URL, and select Cart. Then scroll down and select the following condition: Start to display widget Exit intent.

Notice that you can also set the rule for when to Stop displaying the widget to the same customer: upon closure, a single view, or a selected number of views.

Now, although it’s called shopping cart abandonment, it may happen on any page in your store. For example, a customer may add a product to the cart, continue browsing, and decide to leave without returning to the cart. In this case, you can display a reminder like this one:

To recreate this scenario, you’ll need to set the following conditions in the Targeting tab:

1. Include field: leave the default value (which is all pages of your store)
2. Show widget to visitors if: Cart items count is greater than 0
3. Start to display widget: Exit-intent

In the button click settings, select the ‘Open URL’ action and paste your shopping cart URL to redirect customers.

After you finish setting things up, hit Save & close and activate the popup using prompts. It will instantly go live, ready to prevent shopping cart abandonment in your Shopify store.

2. Encourage customers to join your email list before they leave

Many people abandon shopping carts simply because they are not ready to buy at the moment. This means they might reconsider their decision.

For example, did you know that abandoned cart emails have an open rate of 45% and a conversion rate of more than 10%?

However, before you send those automated emails, you need to capture the addresses of abandoning customers. Here is a Shopify email popup designed for these purposes:

Again, to add it to your Shopify store, just make a click on the template and follow the prompts. Unlike the discount popup, this is a two-page form. This means that when a customer enters their email and hits the button, they will see a default submission success message:

This message is customizable, too. For instance, instead of sending the coupon code via email, you may want to display it on that second page and encourage the customer to finalize the purchase right away.

Alternatively, you can set an autoresponder using the Notifications tab. An autoresponder is a message that will be sent automatically to everyone who fills out the form. Use this message to deliver the coupon code or encourage further actions.

To use the autoresponder feature, you don’t need email marketing software. However, you should integrate this popup with your Shopify customer list and/or the email marketing platform of your choice.

The aptly-named Integrations tab is designed just for that. If you’ve already installed the Getsitecontrol app to your Shopify website, you’ll see the option to connect your list of Customers in the menu.

Field mapping will help you maintain list segmentation in order. For instance, you can create a tag for abandoning customers who chose to sign up in exchange for a discount and use this information for your automated email campaigns.

Before saving and activating the popup, make sure you go through the Targeting tab settings using the same logic we discussed in the previous popup example.

3. Ask abandoning customers why they are leaving

While looking for ways to reduce cart abandonment, you might as well try to understand why people are leaving in the first place. And the best way to find that out is to ask them using an exit-intent survey for Shopify.

Once you add this template to your dashboard, you’ll be able to change the response options and add extra fields.

Keep in mind that this template also contains two pages, and you can use the second page to collect additional feedback, capture email addresses, provide a discount code, or just thank the respondent for participating.

When your survey starts collecting responses, they will be stored right in your Getsitecontrol dashboard. You can get a quick overview of responses as well as a more detailed report on each response.

Finding out the most common reasons why people leave without purchasing is the first step to reducing cart abandonment in your Shopify store.

Obviously, you’re not limited to where you can display this survey. For instance, along with the shopping cart, you may want to display it on product pages in your store.

Wrapping up

Depending on your industry, shopping cart abandonment rates can range from 60% to 85%. That’s a lot of potential sales slipping away from you! And although you can’t stop people from changing their minds in the middle of their shopping journeys, you can reduce shopping cart abandonment for your Shopify store by implementing a few easy tactics.

One of those tactics is exit-intent popups. You may want to start by placing a survey and finding out the reasons why people leave without purchasing. Based on that information, you can develop a solid strategy for optimizing conversions in your store.