Unlocking Hidden Revenue for Fashion Retailers: The Ultimate Basket Abandonment Checklist

In a fiercely competitive modern-day marketplace where online shoppers are one tap away from endless competitive options, the basket abandonment issue remains prevalent for fashion eCommerce.

This article will shed some light on the frequent revenue leaks and missed opportunities that online fashion retailers face when neglecting to implement a robust basket abandonment strategy.

We’ll then provide a comprehensive basket abandonment checklist that offers actionable strategies and tips that can help fashion retailers create on-site experiences that prevent users from abandoning their carts.

The financial implications of cart abandonment

Fashion eCommerce is a sector that is hit particularly hard by these lost sales, with the current basket abandonment rate sitting at around 78.31%. 

As shoppers leave items in their baskets and head to other sites, the most direct financial impact is the lost sales revenue from these abandoned products, affecting a business’s overall performance. 

In addition to this, customer acquisition costs are likely to rise as costs are spread over a small number of customers due to more potential customers abandoning their baskets. 

Looking more long-term, cart abandonment can also affect customer lifetime value (CLV) if a significant number of users do not complete transactions. Retaining customers and encouraging repeat purchases are crucial to long-term profitability. 

There are many frustrations associated with the industry’s high cart abandonment rate, with various stages and touchpoints throughout the customer journey that are notorious for shoppers abandoning their purchases.

Identifying frequent drop-off points on your site and how you can take action to prevent shoppers from abandoning a purchase can help improve your financial performance and secure more sales.  

Identifying revenue leaks

Basket abandonment may be preventing your business from growing by limiting its revenue potential.

There are specific areas throughout the journey where these revenue leaks can occur, which may be hindering your overall eCommerce performance, including: 

• Product discovery: This phase is a crucial part of the eCommerce journey as it allows your shopper to get a feel for your product offering and explore products they may be interested in. If a shopper isn’t introduced to the right products for them, or they’re struggling to navigate through your product catalogue to find what they want, they may end up bouncing off your site.
• Incomplete transactions: Your shopper has made it to the final hurdle but is not quite over the finish line. The checkout process is a common drop-off point, where engaged shoppers may encounter things like unexpected delivery costs or a long-winded checkout that may lead them to abandon their purchase, resulting in an abundance of incomplete transactions.  
• Missed upsell or cross-sell opportunities: At the point when your shopper is engaged on your site, adding items to their basket, you have the opportunity to upsell and cross-sell them more items to complement the items they’re interested in. When a basket abandoner leaves your site, this opportunity for higher revenue and growing AOV is missed.

The basket abandonment issue disrupts cash flow and affects profitability. This lost revenue can be the difference between a brand staying afloat or being left behind in a challenging economy. 

These revenue leaks have an underlying impact on the overall financial health of any business, not to mention the continued frustrations for retailers as they look for opportunities to grow revenue further.

The missed opportunities

As much as the basket abandonment issue can cause many problems, it’s a unique opportunity for retailers to delve a bit deeper into how shoppers are interacting with their site and get to grips with the reasons why shoppers might be abandoning their purchases. 

These unfinished transactions and incomplete purchases provide a whole host of data for retailers to draw insights from.

Providing a crucial look into customer behaviour and buying patterns, retailers experiencing this problem must take note of how their cart abandoners move through their journey. 

Understanding this intent can help you map out more effective marketing strategies and help you identify opportunities for optimisation on your site in the form of data-driven campaigns or customer journey optimisation solutions. 

Using the data gathered from the abandoned carts analytics provides actionable feedback on the parts of your strategy you might need to refine. From here you can map out a robust plan for ensuring you capitalise on all opportunities and begin to boost your operational performance. 

The ultimate cart abandonment checklist

Let’s delve into an actionable checklist of the changes you implement on your site and touchpoints throughout the journey you can optimise to get ahead of the cart abandonment issue. 

1. Provide personalised offers

Personalisation plays a crucial role in how users interact with your site, and it can be particularly effective when it comes to capturing the attention of your shopper at exactly the right moment to prevent basket abandonment. 

The good news is that the industry is equipped with easy-to-use data-driven tools that can tailor content based on the contents of a shopper’s cart. 

This personalised approach to on-site messaging and incentives can play a big role in encouraging your engaged shoppers who have products in their baskets to finish their purchase. 

You could utilise Overlays to display a personalised discount, communicate your limited-time promotion or provide an exclusive offer based on basket value to give your shopper that final push towards completing their purchase, and take action against abandonment.

2. Create a sense of urgency

Building a sense of urgency throughout your site is another method for fighting back against basket abandonment.

You could highlight the number of times an item has been viewed or purchased in the past day to create a fear of missing out.  

You can also make use of countdown timer campaigns such as Reserve Stock Countdown or Free Delivery Countdown to create a sense of urgency and encourage shoppers to purchase sooner rather than later to avoid missing out on a great deal. 

By introducing this fear of missing out in your communications and crafting compelling language within your campaigns, you can encourage users to act promptly so they don’t miss out on your deals. 

3. Utilise exit intent strategies

Exit intent strategies are another feature you can make use of to prevent users from leaving your site. 

With the help of data-driven technology, you can detect when a shopper shows intent to leave and target them with a personalised campaign to get them to stay. 

You can make use of the exit intent Overlay campaigns to: 

• Remind them of your payment gateways: Use this opportunity to remind shoppers of your payment integrations or flexible buy now pay later options to remove any potential barriers to them completing their purchase.
• Give them a reason to stay: Remind shoppers coming towards the end of the sales funnel of the reasons to stay and shop with your brand rather than abandoning their purchase. This could look like promoting your USPs or your express delivery options. 
• Provide a discount incentive: There’s no denying that shoppers want the best value for their money. If a shopper shows intent to leave, you can target them with a discount at exactly the right time and reassure them that they’re doing the right thing by choosing to purchase with your brand. 

4. Enhance the customer experience

A comprehensive basket abandonment strategy can contribute to an overall improved customer experience. 

Consider how implementing more user-friendly processes on your site can help prevent abandonment and allow for a smoother journey all the way through their purchases. This can include:

• Simplify product discovery: Make it easy for shoppers to find exactly what they’re looking for with an intuitive product discovery strategy. Consider integrating AI-powered Search and Recommendations tools to showcase your product catalogue and provide product inspiration throughout the shopping journey, preventing users from becoming disengaged or frustrated by not being able to find the item they had in mind. 
• Transparency within pricing: Communicate your prices and delivery costs clearly throughout the customer journey to prevent shoppers from abandoning their baskets due to unexpected or hidden costs once they get to the checkout.
• Clear return policies: Consider how you can make all the information your shopper might need for their purchase readily available. Things like your return policies and delivery options can encourage shoppers to make their purchases with ease. 

Providing a user-friendly buying experience, can make your shopper feel confident and informed enough to purchase from your brand.

5. Create an optimised checkout process

The checkout page is an area you can focus on streamlining to reduce friction for shoppers and prevent abandonment. 

You could consider optimising the complete checkout process, allowing for easy guest checkouts, or pre-populating your checkout forms to speed up the steps to conversion.

Looking at how you can make it as easy as possible for shoppers to complete their purchase and simplify the buying process helps to ensure high-intent shoppers aren’t deterred from making the final step to ordering.

Pro tip: If your shopper isn’t quite ready for the checkout just yet, you could make use of the Save My Basket Overlay campaign to encourage them to enter their data. You can then use Email Sequences to send their basket directly to them to pick up at a later date. This is a good way to prevent basket abandonment and ensure revenue is not lost.

6. Re-engagement campaigns

Nowadays, the competitive options available in the eCommerce industry mean it’s inevitable for some carts to be abandoned.

However, hope is not lost if they do end up leaving their basket behind. You can then focus your efforts on re-engagement and retargeting campaigns to recover this revenue.

Some of the retargeting strategies you may want to consider are 

• Abandoned cart emails: You can implement a series of timely Abandoned Cart sequences to remind customers of the products they’ve left behind. You could include personalised content, product details, or even a targeted incentive to encourage them back into their shopping journey.
• Retargeting ads: You can utilise paid advertising on multiple different platforms to retarget users who’ve abandoned their carts. You could consider implementing a dynamic remarketing ad set to showcase the exact products a user left in their cart. This is an effective method to rekindle interest in your brand and advertise on the most relevant channels to them. 

Retargeting strategies across channels are effective for capturing the attention of your customer and putting your brand back at the forefront of their mind. 

By implementing a data-driven re-targeting strategy you can make efforts to successfully recover lost revenue.

Suggested reading: For more details on abandoned cart recovery emails, check out our blog ’How to Get the Most Out of Your Basket Abandonment Emails’ 

7. Reach your customers across channels

Regarding your marketing efforts and abandonment strategies, it’s important to ensure you’re reaching your customers through various channels including email, social media, and SMS as well as your on-site messaging.  

By identifying where your shoppers spend time online and which channels they use, you can implement the most consistent messaging and create a cohesive, integrated marketing strategy. 

By doing this you ensure your campaigns are reaching further and targeting your shoppers across channels.

The urgency of implementing a basket abandonment strategy

Considering the rapidly changing landscape of fashion in eCommerce, it’s essential to get ahead with a comprehensive basket abandonment strategy, taking on board marketing and cart recovery best practices. 

As shoppers address how they can retain a competitive edge in such a saturated industry, each opportunity for revenue needs to be grasped.

There’s now a real urgency for fashion retailers to address the cart abandoners on their site, looking at how they can keep up with customer expectations and maximise sales.

Taking action against cart abandonment

By actioning these basket abandonment strategies and tips you can optimise the frequent drop-off points, and take proactive steps towards reducing your basket abandonment rate. 

By tackling this persistent issue you prevent all the missed opportunities and revenue losses that come alongside an unfinished purchase. 

Your lost sales don’t have to stay lost forever, with a combination of user journey optimisation tools, data-driven solutions, and an effective approach to customer retargeting you can successfully drive higher revenue for your brand. 

Next steps: Get our step-by-step guide to reducing cart abandonment in fashion eCommerce for practical strategies to increase conversions.