How Can You Apply E-commerce Cart Abandonment Strategies in Offline Retail? (Or at Least Something Similar.)

Implementing online shopping cart abandonment strategies in stores

You’ve likely envied the tools and processes available to your e-commerce colleagues. They have access to dozens of software and processes designed to “save” potential purchases—encouraging visitors to return and complete their purchases after abandoning their shopping carts.

Remarketing, shopping cart abandonment emails, exit intent overlays (commonly known as “popups”), live chat support, targeted discounts (coupons, free shipping), highly optimized product pages, and increasingly seamless checkout processes…

…It would be great to have a similar arsenal in an offline store, as it would help reduce the number of visitors who leave without making a purchase.

This is crucial. E-commerce businesses put so much effort into reducing shopping cart abandonment because every site visitor costs a lot of money—both online and offline. People browse products because they were enticed by an ad, newsletter, video, post, Instagram Story, or some other campaign activity. All of this costs money—money that the company expects to recover through actual sales. Competition is increasing, and profit margins are shrinking.

Therefore, persuading visitors in your store to make a purchase (reducing the “walkout” rate) could be your most profitable improvement.

The heart of retention processes is being there for your customer when and how they need you. If they have a question, there should be someone available to answer it.

That’s why we developed a “sales caller” solution, which can increase your sales floor presence without the need to hire additional staff.

Here’s how it works:

1. Your customer scans an easily accessible QR code (or approaches a touchscreen kiosk—we tailor the setup to your store’s needs).
2. They can then decide what kind of assistance they want:
   1. Request personal assistance (our system will display the estimated wait time until a staff member arrives)
   2. Chat or talk with someone on the phone (if that’s more convenient or all your staff are occupied)
   3. Schedule an appointment if they prefer to return later
   4. Check if a specific product is in stock (and even place an order)
   5. Provide feedback (important for both store development and the marketing department)
   6. (You can also set up a custom interaction unique to your store)

Some “walkouts” can be avoided because the reason is simply that your customer couldn’t get assistance in time.

We’ve found that the “sales caller” can convert up to 5% of walkouts into purchases. This leads to immediate revenue and profit increases, with the system quickly paying for itself while improving the quality of your service.

We’d be happy to demo the system for you—please reach out if you’re interested.