With abandoned cart rates sitting between 60-80%, online retailers have to do everything they can to get users to come back and complete purchases they started but didn’t finish. Abandoned cart emails have shown to be an effective tool to re-cover these sales, but more can be done.

The reality is that online shoppers don’t just add items to their shopping cart to buy them right now. The shopping cart allows users to save items of interest while they browse, compare products and add or remove products to qualify for site discounts such as free shipping. When it comes to evaluating the items in their shopping cart, users traditionally have two options: They can either delete an item permanently or proceed to the checkout and buy it. If they are not quite ready to buy a particular item, they will have no other choice but to delete it permanently, even if there is intent to buy it later. That’s where a “Save For Later” feature is invaluable. It means you give your customers a choice. For Solutionists clients, this has brought in extra sales. In the last 3 months, saved items have had a conversion rate of 7.23%.

There are, however, a couple of important things to keep in mind when looking at introducing an option for your customers to save items for later. To avoid disruption to the checkout flow, users should not be taken away from the cart page when they save an item for later. Instead, they should be presented with a confirmation message to indicate that their action was completed. 

The save item should then show on the cart page below the shopping cart items. User testing has proven that is where a customer expects to find them, although it is important to clearly distinguish saved items from cart items. 

The feature also needs to be able to handle both new and returning customers, it should not be limited to customers that are logged in. If a customer was logged in when they saved items, then these should not only be displayed on the cart page, but also against their account.

It’s all about making it as easy as possible for your customers to find what they want. If your customers don’t have to delete an item they are interested in, they won’t have to sift through pages and pages of products to find it again next time they come back to your online store. The item will be right where they left it, increasing the chances that they will buy it. And if you don’t miss out on a sale, it’s a win/win!

See the feature in action on one of our MaxCommerce sites:

Max Fashions

Burnsco

Rockmans

Noni B