Shopping Cart Abandonment Overview

SharpSpring’s Shopping Cart Abandonment tool enables users to learn when a potential customer has begun the transaction process for a product, but has left the item(s) in their shopping cart for a designated period of time without completing the purchase. Using this information, you are empowered to create automated emails that target these “abandoners” and encourage them to follow through with the product they are considering.

What can Shopping Cart Abandonment be used for? 

• Send automated follow-up emails to leads who have begun but not completed an online transaction
• Pull transaction data into dynamic email content
• Incorporate Shopping Cart Abandonment rules into automations

This article will detail how to configure the Shopping Cart Abandonment tool.

Accessing Shopping Cart Abandonment Settings

Shopping cart abandonment settings can be accessed by doing the following:

Step One: In the top-right of the SharpSpring application, click the  icon.

Step Two: In the drop-down menu that appears, click Settings.

Step Three: On the left menu of the page that appears, under the Tracking section, click Sites.

Step Four: Select a site to add abandonment settings to.
Note: For more information on how to create sites, refer to Adding a Site and Inserting SharpSpring Tracking Code.

Step Five: In the site's General tab, under Shopping Cart Abandonment Settings, select a time to list a cart as abandoned.

Step Six: Click the Save Changes button.

Step Seven: Integrate your shopping cart.

Utilizng Abandonment Tasks and Action Groups

The Shopping Cart Abandonment Tool can be triggered by a workflow. For example, you can utilize the “abandons a shopping cart” trigger to activate a workflow that contains actions like sending emails to leads, or sending notifications to users.

The automation example below exemplifies one such task/workflow construction.

Adding the Abandonment Widget to Emails

Before setting up the task/action group automation that fires the abandonment email, you will need to add the abandonment widget to that email.  This widget will automatically place the contents of the abandoned cart into the email. This way, you can send your visitors an email encouraging them to purchase the items that were abandoned. 

To add a shopping cart abandonment widget, do the following:

Step One: In the top toolbar of the SharpSpring application, hover over Content.

Step Two: In the drop-down menu that appears, select Emails.

Step Three: Open the email you want to add the widget to.

Note: For more information on creating emails, refer to Creating and Editing Emails.

Step Four: From the menu on the left, click Shopping Cart Abandonment.

Step Five: Select the site that has your shopping cart.

Step Six: Drag and drop one of the four widgets into your email. You can choose from one of the following widgets:

• Cart list with images

• Cart list with totals

• Cart list with images and prices

• Cart list with images and description

Note: The type of widget that you choose will determine what shows up in your email. If you choose Cart list with totals and not with images, then the list of the items that were abandoned in the cart will show without images.  

Ready to Learn More?

• Creating a List of Visitors Who Have Purchased an Item on Your Site
• Creating a List of Visitors Coming to a Page on Your Site
• Generating a List of Shopping Cart Abandonments