Best 5 Push Notification Strategies: Prevent Cart Abandonment Effectively

Cart abandonment is one of the biggest grievances for e-commerce brands. SaleCycle estimates that cart abandonment rates range from 69% to 81% across various industries.

Customers tend to research multiple options before making a purchase, even if there are exciting deals and wonderful products. Therefore, they end up window shopping and adding items to their shopping carts. This is not something you can prevent or stop as it’s not in your hand.

Luckily, you can establish a cart recovery program to encourage people to come back into the stores. An effective re-engagement strategy for brands is pushing notifications. Such notifications allow brands to reach out to abandoned cart customers.

Push Notification: What and Why For?

Basically, a web push notification is a popup notification that appears on the desktop or mobile browser of the subscriber. By sending this notification to customers, the brand is able to interact with them even when they aren’t on your website.

Other than sending reminders about abandoned carts, push notifications are also used for distributing promotions, purchasing confirmations, and delivering orders.

By sending push notifications when your customers are most active and combined with the right offers, push notifications can persuade them to return to their carts and complete the purchase.

Push Notifications and Text Messages

Even though push notifications are similar to text messages, they differ greatly from them. Both messages appear on the user’s lock screen and go directly to their phone, but the messages are still very different.

In order for a push notification to display on the lock screen properly, you must restrict the number of characters. Since a user can open up a text message to read the entire message, it can be longer than a standard text message. 

However, a cut-off push notification on the lock screen will affect your conversion rate. This is why push notifications with fewer words are more likely to be clicked.

We have gathered below 5 effective ways to prevent cart abandonment by utilizing web push notifications:

1. Deliver Push Notifications Timely Basis

The web or mobile browser receives push notifications in real time and displays them as notifications in the notification bar. Depending on the time when subscribers receive their push notifications, you will determine the success of your campaign. 

Moreover, schedule the notifications for your users based on their location if their time zones differ. Because an appropriately timed push notification can make all the difference between an effective and an ineffective experience.

For example, it makes sense to reach a user’s desktop or mobile browser with a “Happy Hour” discount notification during the second half of the day rather than 8 AM on a Sunday morning.

2. Sense of Urgency

“We, humans, are more motivated by the idea of potential loss than of potential gain,” observes Dr. Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

Creating a sense of urgency encourages customers to make impulsive purchases without missing out on the deal by tapping into the “fear of missing out.”.

If you need to make a sale soon, using messages that convey urgency can help you take advantage of this psychology principle. Using phrases such as “stock is running low” or “X hours left to purchase” makes sense.

Likewise, displaying the recent purchases of another customer would create urgency. This would alert the customer that the stock is getting low. That would indicate the product is already popular with the users.

In this manner, any apprehension about the purchase is alleviated and confidence is built among the user. Notifications like these result in conversions from users who have sincerely liked your product.

3. Segmenting Your Users

Subscribers may sign up for push notifications for a variety of different reasons, from receiving updates about products to receiving discount codes. If all of your subscribers received the same web push notifications, your unsubscribe rate could be high. Each subscriber would have a different preference.

According to one of the PushEngage reports, with segmentation, we observed a 2X increase in click-through rates for web push notifications. In addition, we observed a decline in push notification subscriptions when notifications were sent to targeted segments.

Divide users into segments and place them into buckets. Thus, you can identify your most loyal customers and send them discounts tailored to their needs. Consequently, your engagement will increase and your bounce rate will decrease. If your visitors aren’t engaged, you can send follow-up campaigns to them. You can segment your subscribers according to the following factors:

• Type and language of the browser
• Location and Time Zone
• New versus old visitors
• Purchasing frequency

Lastly; Page views, product searches, previous purchases, and abandoned shopping carts or browsers are considered actions.

4. Copy and Images Influence in Web Push Notifications

The title and description of your push notification can only be between 40 and 120 characters long.

In order to create a clear, concise copy that represents the most important value proposition, you need to decide what your most important value proposition is. Be sure to incorporate a call-to-action (CTA) to direct the user to the next step in the customer journey.

Don’t forget to consider:

1. Push notifications with images. By using the image, you will be able to stand out in the push notification, which will increase conversion rates and customer engagement. Industry-wise, we assessed how large images affect web push notifications at PushEngage. Here is what we found:

1. Personalize the content of your push notification. A Statista report from 2021 showed that only 25.3% of the world’s internet users are English speakers. The copy of the push notification should be localized for the geography or country you’re targeting in order to increase engagement. There is nothing more appealing to a user than receiving notifications in their native tongue. Having a loyal customer base and expanding your brand globally is the best way to build your business.

5. Push Notifications Several Times

Rather than sending a single push notification, send several. Send the first notification to remind the customer that their product has been abandoned. Next, the notifications promote limited-time discounts and create urgency. 

A final notification that informs the user that the offer is about to expire will make them feel FOMO.

It’s worth mentioning, to ensure that you close the campaign for the user if they purchase the product at last.

Final Words

You cannot afford to lose valuable customers in the digital marketplace, which is intensely competitive. Marketers must develop effective push notifications that encourage cart recovery. 

Without engaging your customers with your brand, being profitable is quite impossible. Push notifications would definitely be a solution to prevent cart abandonment.