Shopify Cart Abandonment Strategy (10 Shopify Stores With 10X ROI)

Bonus Material: Ecommerce Empire Bundle

Attention: The information you’re about to read works for all ecommerce platforms: BigCommerce, EKM, Magento, MonsterCommerce, Neto, OpenCart, PrestaShop, SAP Hybris, Shopify, Squarespace, Volusion, Weebly, WooCommerce, X-Cart.

Do you want to grow your email list? Ah, yes please Uncle Sumo.

Do you want to turn your visitors into new customers? Obviously.

Just one problem.

With the over 100,000+ ecommerce sites who grow their business with Sumo, there’s one thing we’ve learned that is certain with all stores:

It Doesn’t Matter How Good Your Ecommerce Marketing Skills Are, People Will Abandon Your Cart

It’s like Taco Tuesdays at Sumo; it will always happen.

But you want to know what’s rare? Having one cart abandonment strategy (that you use on your Shopify cart and checkout pages) that you know will work over and over again.

Fortunately, we uncovered one strategy used by 10 different Shopify stores, that’s proven to recover anywhere from $7,000 to $311,000 in sales, from visitors abandoning their Shopify cart.

Your ability to execute this strategy to recover abandoned carts and turn them into new customers, is the only thing stopping you from getting up to 36.2% more customers to go from cart to purchase.

Graph showing Sumo

On average, across Sumo’s top 10 Shopify customers, we see an average reduction in cart abandons of 9.54% for new customers. If you do the math, for every 10,000 people who leave with items in their shopping cart, that’s an extra 954 new customers you’re missing out on.

And that’s not even taking into account all your return buyers.

Not having this strategy prevents you from growing your Shopify store as fast as you wish it would.

Not having this strategy is very literally costing you money.

The strategy: When someone visits your cart OR checkout pages, then leaves the page, you can offer them a percent off, dollar off, or free shipping as an incentive for them to purchase.

Here’s what it looks like:

Screenshot showing Sumo shortcut settings

Will it get you NEW customers? Yes.

Why? Sumo’s tech nerds use cookie-based technology to only show the cart abandonment incentive to people once.

That means people who buy without trying to leave your cart don’t see the popup, and pay your normal price. Everyone else will see your popup, so you can incentivize them to purchase.

This automatically stops you from annoying your website visitors and showing discounts to returning customers (unless they use a different device, clear their cookies, or use incognito mode).

Here’s what it looks like (anyone on one of your web pages containing the word “cart,” “checkout” or “checkouts” who tries to leave, will see your popup): 

Screenshot showing Sumo shortcut settings

It’s like having a 24/7 salesperson watching the mouse movement of every website visitor. Right when your customer is about to leave your store, your salesperson jumps into action with an irresistible offer to buy.

You can try this strategy for free on your Shopify store by clicking the button below.

Here’s how Sumo’s top ten Shopify stores are using the strategy.

Shopify Store #1: The Horse

Industry: Accessories (Leather Goods)

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Strategy: 10% Off

Sumo Design Template: Impress

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 20,701 (number of people who showed an intent to exit and were shown the cart abandonment popup)

  • Email Conversions: 7,749 (how many people entered their email on the popup form)

  • New Customers: 3,868 (how many people of the “views” above purchased instead of leaving)

  • New Sales: $311,585.73 (how much sales came from people who purchased using the discount code)

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $543.02

Total Sales From Sumo: $311,585.73

ROI: 573X

Shopify Store #2: M2S Bikes

Industry: Bikes (Electric)

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 10% Off

Sumo Design Template: Impress

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 843

  • Email Conversions: 187

  • New Customers: 34

  • New Sales: $69,179.28

Screenshot showing Sumo settings

Total Paid For Sumo: $852.13

Total Sales From Sumo: $69,179.28

ROI: 81X

Shopify Store #3: Loly In The Sky

Industry: Clothing (Shoes)

Company Size: 11-50 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 10% Off (plus A/B testing $100 Off and Free Shipping — see how they run their discount test here

Sumo Design Template: Space

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup in Spanish

Results

  • Views: 8,764

  • Email Conversions: 2,835

  • New Customers: 923

  • New Sales: $48,337.52

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns settings

Total Paid For Sumo: $412.18

Total Sales From Sumo: $48,337.52

ROI: 117x

Shopify Store #4: Ice Age Meals

Industry: Food (Paleo)

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 10% Off

Sumo Design Template: Imagine

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 1,753

  • Email Conversions: 708

  • New Customers: 257

  • New Sales: $47,155.46

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $744

Total Sales From Sumo: $47,155.46

ROI: 63X

Shopify Store #5: Proper LBC

Industry: Clothing

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 10% Off

Sumo Design Template: Postcard

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 8,714

  • Email Conversions: 661

  • New Customers: 213

  • New Sales: $27,036.25

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $490.68

Total Sales From Sumo: $27,036.25

ROI: 55X

Shopify Store #6: Touch Dolls

Industry: Clothing

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 10% Off

Sumo Design Template: Space

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 22,875

  • Email Conversions: 2,179

  • New Customers: 381

  • New Sales: $27,017.41

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $347.20

Total Sales From Sumo: $27,017.41

ROI: 77X

Shopify Store #7: Minnie Rose

Industry: Clothing

Company Size: 11-50 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 25% Off

Sumo Design Template: Space

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 622

  • Email Conversions: 121

  • New Customers: 48

  • New Sales: $12,458.48

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $730.40

Total Sales From Sumo: $12,458.48

ROI: 17X

Shopify Store #8: William Painter

Industry: Accessories (Sunglasses)

Company Size: 11-50 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: $20 Off

Sumo Design Template: Space

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 2,629

  • Email Conversions: 209

  • New Customers: 74

  • New Sales: $11,873.84

    Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $726.21

Total Sales From Sumo: $11,873.84

ROI: 16X

Shopify Store #9: Right Channel Radios

Industry: Accessories (Radios)

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 5% Off

Sumo Design Template: Postcard

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 2,453

  • Email Conversions: 163

  • New Customers: 81

  • New Sales: $10,089.53

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $741.47

Total Sales From Sumo: $10,089.53

ROI: 13X

Shopify Store #10: Flyte

Industry: Home (Lights)

Company Size: 2-10 Employees

Cart Abandonment Incentive: 20% Off

Sumo Design Template: Space

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

Results

  • Views: 222

  • Email Conversions: 32

  • New Customers: 18

  • New Sales: $7,045.61

Screenshot showing Sumo discount campaigns

Total Paid For Sumo: $676.36

Total Sales From Sumo: $7,045.61

ROI: 10x

Who’s Cart Abandonment Incentive Converts The Best?

Here’s a summary of all ten Shopify stores data with conversion rates from view to email and view to customer, so you can see which Shopify stores cart abandonment incentives are converting the best:

Shopify Store
Incentive
Conversion Rate (View To Email)
Conversion Rate (View To Customer)
Ice Age Meals
10% Off
40.4%
36.2%
The Horse
10% Off
37.4%
18.7%
Loly In The Sky
10% Off
32.3%
10.5%
Flyte
20% Off
14.4%
8.1%
Minnie Rose
25% Off
19.5%
7.7%
M2S Bikes
10% Off
22.2%
4.0%
Right Channel Radios
5% Off
6.6%
3.3%
William Painter
$20 Off
7.9%
2.8%
Proper LBC
10% Off
7.6%
2.4%
Touch Dolls
10% Off
9.5%
1.7%

As you can see, Sumo’s top Shopify stores have proven it’s possible to reduce cart abandons anywhere from 1.7% to 36.2% (average = 9.54%). For every 10,000 people who abandon your cart, that’s an extra 170 to 3,620 new customers.

Here's a summary of all 10 stores' performance using the strategy:

  • They turned 67,576 website visitors into $571,779 new sales.
  • On average, every store’s sales increased by $11,435 per month.
  • The return on investment ranged from 10x to 573x per store. On average store’s got a 100x ROI.

Graph showing top performing Sumo users

Let me show you exactly how Sumo’s highest ROI Shopify Store does it.

Sumo’s Highest ROI Shopify Store

The Horse got 573x ROI using Sumo’s new cart abandonment strategy. They generated 3,868 new customers, and $311,585.73 in new sales. Here are the three optimizations they made to get those results:

  1. Sumo Popup Design: The popup you see when you try to abandon the cart is one of Sumo’s highest converting popup designs called “Impress.” Sumo’s two top sales Shopify stores use this design. Also, the copy used on the headline perfectly matches the exit-intent behavior, telling you to wait before you leave the checkout page, and get 10% off to finish your order.

  2. Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

  3. Sumo Success Popup: The Horse use a Sumo Success Popup (i.e., a popup that appears after you enter your email to get the 10% discount) with a button you can click that automatically applies the discount to your checkout.

  4. Note: Delivering the discount in this way helps increase your conversions from email opt-in to sale, but it can sometimes lead to people getting a discount code using a fake email. If you want to prevent codes going to someone who didn’t enter their actual email, you can integrate Sumo with BriteVerify to verify every email you receive from Sumo, for a penny per email.

    Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

  5. Sumo Automatic Email Responder: In case people have an issue on the success popup or get distracted, The Horse use Sumo’s Automatic Email Responder. Sumo’s email system makes sure the email gets delivered to the inbox with the subject line “10% Off Your Order Today Only.” 

Screenshot showing an email

Of all the subject lines we’ve seen, this subject line has proven to be the best performing generating a 54.6% open rate.

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

One Shopify store saw what The Horse were doing and copied their strategy — except they made one small tweak to their popup that doubled the conversion rate from 18% to 36%.

One Copywriting Tweak You Can Make To Double Your Cart Abandonment Conversion Rate

Ice Age Meals gets 36.2% of people who view their cart abandonment popup to convert into a paying customer using this copy and design:

Screenshot showing a Sumo popup

To outconvert The Horse (who get an 18.7% conversion rate), they simply removed the image, made the copy on the popup clearer, and added benefit-driven copy to let people know that they’ll also “get notified of any future sales.”

Combining The Horse and Ice Age Meals strategies together, Sumo came up with an action plan for any ecommerce store to reduce cart abandons, and get massive results right away:

Action Plan

1. Create a cart abandonment popup.

2. Use a headline similar to “Don’t go! Get 10% off now!”

3. Use a description similar to “Enter your email for 10% off. We’ll also notify you of any future sales.”

4. Create a success popup that automatically adds the discount code to the checkout with one-click.

5. Create an automatic email responder to give people a reminder about using their discount code, with a subject line similar to “10% Off Your Order Today Only.”

This strategy works so well we coded it into Sumo as a SHORTCUT. That means you can click one button, then follow three simple steps to install it on your site.

Get Sumo’s New “Plug & Play” Shopify Cart Abandonment Shortcut (Also Works With WooCommerce)

The bad news: you’re always going to have some cart abandons.

The good news: you can stop up to 36.2% of people who abandon your cart using Sumo’s new “Reduce Cart Abandonment” shortcut inside Sumo 2.0.

Screenshot showing Sumo shortcuts

Here’s how you can do it:

  1. Get a 14-day free trial of the Sumo ECOMMERCE plan (using the button below)

  2. Go to “Shortcuts” on the left-hand-side of the Sumo web app

  3. Select the “Reduce Cart Abandonment” shortcut

Follow the step-by-step instructions to set up your own cart abandonment strategy. In three minutes or less you’ll have the same cart abandonment strategy on your Shopify store, that The Horse used to generate 3,868 new customers and $311,585.73 in new sales. They’ve been using it for less than three months, paid $543.02 for Sumo, and already have a 573x ROI.

You can tweak your copy to match Ice Age Meals highest converting popup, like I showed you. Or you can use one of Sumo’s built-in copy templates that are all proven to convert.

If you’re a small ecommerce business, this is THE strategy that is proven to 10x your marketing investment. Plus, the whole strategy has already been set up for you inside Sumo (everything from the high-converting popup design to the automatic email responder), you just need to select it and follow the steps.

If you don’t have the Sumo Ecommerce plan yet (which is required to get access to the “Reduce Cart Abandonment” strategy), click the button below, then install the strategy on your site.

Note: This strategy works on all ecommerce platforms: BigCommerce, EKM, Magento, MonsterCommerce, Neto, OpenCart, PrestaShop, SAP Hybris, Shopify, Squarespace, Volusion, Weebly, WooCommerce, X-Cart.