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How to Fight Cart Abandonment Using Exit Intent Popups

Cart abandonment has been bothering stores for so long; with exit intent popups, eCommerce stores have seen a significant reduction in cart abandonment rate.

Exit intent popups were specifically designed for eCommerce stores to prevent the customer from quitting the store.

Even though they are relatively new, one out of seven eCommerce stores is using them to fight cart abandonment.

It is time for you to do it too, that’s why we created this article to show you the best Exit intent popup practices and ways to use Exit intent popups to fight Cart abandonment. So, dive into this article to fight cart abandonment.

What is Exit intent popup?

Exit intent popups are website popups that are triggered when the visitor is about to click the exit button or actually clicks it to quit the page.

Reports say that 70% of users don’t return once they quit, best exit intent popups are capable of converting 10% of those users.

Exit intent popup example

Studies have shown that websites that use the best Exit intent popups have better conversion rates compared to sites that don’t use it.

Exit intent popups are customizable, you can alter the design and message as per the page it’s about to be displayed.

How does Exit intent popup work?

Exit intent popups work as a trigger mechanism, the website detects mouse movements. And when it is moved towards the exit button and it displays the popup to persuade the user to stay in the store.

How exit popup works

You should know that since exit popups are caused by mouse cursor movement, so they are not a viable mobile device solution.

Exit intent popups are more useful in landing pages, eCommerce stores, and commercial stores. Talking about eCommerce stores, Exit intent popups has become mandatory for eCommerce stores to minimize cart abandonment.

You can increase your revenue by 10-20% by reducing your cart abandonment using Exit intent popups.

What makes a good Exit intent popup?

Exit intent popup is predominantly used by eCommerce stores for various purposes. Preventing Cart abandonment is just one of its purposes.

But what are the factors that lead to a good Exit intent popup? Here is the list of some crucial factors,

  • Timing
  • Relevancy
  • Clarity
  • Call to action

Your Exit intent popup’s success depends on these crucial factors. Make sure you display the popup with relevant content at the right timing and clarity. And use a perfect Call to action to navigate the visitors.

Best Exit Intent Popup Practices

If you want to achieve the maximum benefits of Exit Intent popups then you must follow some of the best Exit intent popup practices. We’ve discussed them below along with a few examples that’ll set you straight.

Define your Intent

Yes, the first thing you’ve got to do is define your intent. You should know what to do, when and where to do it. If you don’t figure it out at the beginning then your Exit intent popup will probably fail.

Alright, if you’re a bit confused, these two scenarios will clear it out for you.

Scenario 1 – Customer visits your product page but without a purchase intent, he just reads the product description and quits.

Scenario 2 – Customer visits your product page and adds a product to his cart and then quits at checkout.

Hope these scenarios are clear, now let’s get to the point.

In Scenario 1, the customer just came to check the descriptions. If you display a ‘Free shipping coupon’ popup to prevent him from quitting, he’ll just wonder why did this pop out here, he’ll ignore it and then quit.

But in Scenario 2, the customer added a product to his cart and then he quitted at checkout. The reason for his exit has got to be higher shipping price or else he wouldn’t have come till the checkout.

So, now if you display a Free shipping coupon through the Exit intent popup, the customer will go on to purchase the product.

Thus preventing Cart abandonment.

This is why it is crucial to define your intent for a certain Exit intent popup beforehand. Only then you’ll know which popup should be displayed to the right customer.

Join and get a gift

Here is an Exit intent popup from G-star, it offers a welcome gift, so the store knows that the visitor is new and persuades him to join their community and earn a welcome gift by just entering his email.

Now imagine if this popup just displayed to a long-term customer, it just won’t fit there. This is why defining your popup’s intent is crucial.

Popup Personalization

Not just defining your intent, you can also personalize your popups so that it can engage better with your customers.

Instead of just displaying the same popup to every single one of your customers, you can display a popup based on their purchase history.

An eCommerce store will have both Men and Women section, so create separate popups for both of them and display it accordingly. But for that you must create your Buyer personas initially.

Personalization can be done in simple ways too, it is not always about displaying your customers name, or displaying the popup based on their gender, sometimes a simple conversational kind of popup will work too.

Taft personalized popup

Check out this Exit Intent popup by Taft, they’ve just used a simple conversational tone. This will make the customers feel that you are directly talking to them.

This popup emphasizes more on the customer than the business, that’s how you achieve personalization without putting much effort to it.

So, if you don’t have the resources to create individual popups based on purchase history, gender,etc. Just display popups like these and make your customers feel like the popup was meant for them.

Use Discounts/Rewards to persuade

When it comes to eCommerce customers there is nothing that entices them like Discounts, Coupons or Rewards.

If your main goal for using Exit intent popups is to tackle Cart abandonment, then using discounts in your pop ups will work wonders for you.

Not just Cart abandonment, you can offer discounts and persuade them into joining your community, subscribing to your newsletters and more.

Reports say that Exit intent popups with Discounts have better conversion rates than any other popups used in eCommerce stores.

 Extra 15% off popup

Here is an Exit intent popup by J.Cole that offers a 15% discount on their purchase if they enter their email and sign up to their email services.

By doing this you can get a customer’s email address for further engagement and also increase your sales. They are not going to make waste of the discount so there is no room for Cart abandonment.

Be precise with your content

Remember, you are using Exit intent popups to prevent customers from leaving your site, so don’t write a long paragraph with an unappealing CTA.

Your content must be precise and straight to the point. If you are offering a coupon or a discount write that in headlines, make it clear to read.

And the most crucial thing of an Exit intent popup is the CTA, make sure it is vibrant and different from other colors used in the popup. Your CTA must not be more than words.

Sign up today popup

This is the Exit intent popup of Pixelme, no gloating and just straight to the point and they’ve even highlighted the offer that a customer will get.

A bigger and a brighter CTA to persuade the customer into taking an action.

Don’t sacrifice on design

This is something that most eCommerce stores do, they’ll concentrate on the contents and CTA but they’ll sacrifice the quality of design.

But if you want to achieve maximum conversions with your Exit intent popup then you must craft it to perfection.

Your customers are already leaving so displaying a boring, colorless popup will not work most of the time. Make it colorful and it should stand out from the rest of your site.

Cheap flights popup

Do you notice how the rest of the page has faded out when the popup is displayed, this will make it more appealing to the eyes.

Easy Quitting options

Visitors generally view pop ups as intrusive, so make it easy for them to quit.

Exit intent popups should never be mandatory, it’ll make your site’s user-experience more frustrating.

Easy quitting options

When you design your Exit intent popup, make sure you add a visible close/exit button to close the exit-button.

Alright, these are some of the best Exit intent popup practices that you must follow in order to make your popup achieve maximum conversions.

If you’re wondering how to set up an Exit intent popup by following these best Exit intent popup practices then Retainful has the answers for you. Find out more about Exit intent popup and how to set it up by clicking here.

Ways to use Exit intent Popup to Fight Cart Abandonment

Grab Customer’s Email

There are various forms of Exit intent popups, one such prominent form is the popup used for collecting visitor emails.

If a user enters your store and is not motivated to purchase, he might quit. Display a popup right when he quits, requesting his email address.

Instead of vaguely asking for his email, use ‘Sign up to our newsletter’ popups like the one below. These have better conversions.

Sign up email

User will enter his email and subscribe to your email service to get product updates beforehand, it is a good persuasion tactic.

Why should I capture their email? Can’t I just make them stay in the store by offering exclusive discounts?

Even if you offer discounts you can’t be sure that they won’t quit your store and leave you with an abandoned cart.

That is why collecting their emails beforehand is necessary, now even if they abandon their cart, you can send Cart recovery emails to them and request them to recover it.

Send cart recovery emails

When you’ve captured the user’s email effectively you can send cart recovery emails and request him to recover his abandoned cart to complete his purchase.

There are various plugins that can help you in sending cart recovery emails, one such abandoned cart recovery plugin is Retainful.

Retainful banner

Retainful is an automated plugin that can send cart recovery emails at specified intervals until the customer returns and recovers them.

Indochina abandoned cart email

These are some abandoned cart email templates from retainful which you can send to your customers and request them to recover it.

Retainful has an intuitive drag and drops email builder with which you can customize the abandoned cart recovery email templates as your wish.

This plugin also makes it easy for the customer by sending a single-click recovery link, which helps the customer to recover their cart without much effort.

Offer next order coupons

Another benefit of capturing emails using Exit intent popups is you can send next order coupons via email once they complete a purchase.

By offering Next order coupons you can drive repeated purchases in your store and boost your customer retention rate.

Next order coupons

Next order coupons give you a chance to convert a returning customer into a loyal one and prevent cart abandonment.

Alright, we’ve seen the benefits you can get by collecting email addresses by using Exit intent popups.

Offer discounts during checkout

This is the most common type of Exit intent popup to reduce abandoned carts, display exciting offers through Exit intent popups and make them stay in your store.

Generally, visitors are annoyed by popups, but when you do it right with a legitimate offer you can boost your conversion rates exponentially.

Kate spade

Why are discount popups successful in minimizing cart abandonment?

A major reason why users abandon their cart is high pricing. They start with adding items to their cart and when they see their overall cart price they just quit your store.

So, display a popup with a discount right here and entice your customers to continue shopping at your store.

Percentage Discount

Like we said before, a customer might try to quit because of high pricing. Offer a discount through Exit intent popup like the one below.

Percentage discount

Here the customer will get a 20% discount on their current order if they continue shopping/

Now tell me, what better way is there to prevent your customers from abandoning their cart than offering an exclusive discount.

Provide Free shipping

Display free shipping offers through Exit intent popups and stop cart abandonment.

Customers will be defensive while adding items to their carts as they’ll be worried about the total shipping cost of the cart and they might quit.

So, display an Exit intent popup with a Free shipping offer. This will motivate them return to their cart and purchase more which increase your revenue and sales respectively.

Provide free shipping

Free shipping has been used as a psychological trigger by most eCommerce stores right now. Using them as an Exit intent popup can increase your conversions

Make an ultimate exciting deal

Another way of using discounts in Exit intent popups is by offering an exclusive deal that grabs the attention of the customer. Tempt them, make an offer that they can’t refuse, and reduce cart abandonment.

You’ve tried a 10% offer, you promised free shipping, and if still cart abandonment continues then go for the ultimate deal.

Save up to 80%

Offering deals like this won’t affect your sales because you’re saving a cart from being abandoned. So it is still a win-win situation.

Showcase your social proof

A recent study shows that your visitors can effectively be motivated to take a specific action by displaying your customer testimonials and social proof.

Customer reviews convince people to buy from a platform that they have not previously purchased. Social proof is the influence that your business has on Social media.

Social proof stats

Displaying your reviews, testimonials, and social proof through Exit intent popup will show your authenticity and create a sense of trust which can prevent customers from abandoning their carts.

There are a couple of ways to display your social proof on your Exit intent popups,

Reviews and Testimonials

The numbers one thing that persuades someone to shop are feedback from other consumers.

In a manner, your most powerful sales tools are your best reviews.

Displaying these reviews in your Exit intent popups will prevent customers from abandoning the cart because people trust their peers before making a decision.

Customer review popup

In this popup, there are attention-grabbing offers mentioned in bold but users’ eyes psychologically will go read the testimonial.

This is how you can display your testimonials through Exit intent popups to minimize abandoned carts.

Social media

We live in a digital world, where social media has control over everything. If you have huge social followers or subscribers showcase them on your Exit intent popups.

Social media popup

Millennials trust social media to a great extent when they see that you have a huge social following they’ll spontaneously entrust your brand and stay loyal to your store.

When a user is about to abandon his cart, tempt him to join your social community with Exit intent popups.

This will act as a psychological trigger and prevent cart abandonment.

Touch their sensitive instincts

Every user has a sensitive instinct when it comes to shopping, you can effectively use Exit intent popups to trigger their sensitive side and stop them from abandoning their cart.

These are called psychological triggers and it has been predominantly used in eCommerce stores for years to achieve more conversions and sales.

You can use psychological triggers in Exit intent popups in a couple of ways,

Create urgency

Many eCommerce stores use this tactic even on their product pages, whereas they add a countdown timer to the product to create a sense of urgency for the customer.

Urgency brings FOMO(Fear of missing out) to the customers, they’ll think they’re missing out on an opportunity that they might not get again.

That is why most Exit intent popups use ‘Wait’ or ‘Hold on’ to create a sense of urgency and force customers to take an action right there.

Last minute FOMO popup

A limited-time discount is the best way of creating a sense of urgency for a product. You can go a bit further by adding a countdown clock in your Exit intent popup.

Around 48% of users said that they always completed a purchase when there was a limited-time offer.

Create Scarcity

This is another form of creating FOMO, if the customer doesn’t hurry up and purchase the product it’ll be sold out. This is more effective than using a limited-time offer.

When creating urgency, customers will have some time as the product will be available with a different pricing even after the countdown ends. But when creating scarcity, customers will not have the time to think, they must act quickly or they’ll lose the product.

Amazon scarcity

You might’ve seen this message ‘only 1 left in stock’ in many eCommerce stores. This is how you can create scarcity but by using Exit intent popups.

If the product is a limited edition offer, you can mention that it will be out of sale soon, thus tempting the customers to act rapidly and purchase before it goes out of stock.

This is how you can use psychological triggers in your Exit intent popups and tempt customers before they abandon their cart.

Guide them with Real-time support

One of the most common reasons why customers abandon their carts is not being to interpret details or options on the page. They get confused about how to proceed to the next step, ultimately they quit.

So, what will you do now?

Offer real-time help, reach out to them swiftly, don’t keep them waiting, display a form in the Exit intent popup, so they can enter their queries.

Support

This should be live, 24/7 support, 44% of users expect their queries to be sorted out in live chat or live call. So, keep an agile support team that can guide customers to their goals.

Offering help through Exit intent popups will convince users from abandoning their cart and increase your conversions.

Wrapping up

Cart abandonment is a burden to store owners, but we can surely say that with the advent of Exit intent popups abandoned cart rate has been fairly minimized.

We wanted to show you how the best Exit intent popups work, how to set it up using Retainful and how it can be used to fight cart abandonment in this article.

We hope you had a good understanding of the best Exit intent popup practices. Now it is time for you to set up the best Exit intent popups in your store.

Picture of Joel Platini
Joel Platini
Joel is a content writer that loves to think outside the box. He has an immaculate experience on eCommerce platforms and written articles on customer retention strategies, Shopify app, WooCommerce plugins, etc. Joel is also a whizz in motion graphics as he has a great eye for elegance and finesse.

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