7 of the Most Inventive Cart Abandonment Popup Examples We’ve Seen

If you’re in e-commerce, you’re probably trying different strategies to reduce cart abandonment.

Maybe you haven’t reached the results you’re aiming for or you want to achieve even lower cart abandonment rates.

You know the importance of well-written abandoned cart emails and how they can boost your conversion rates.

But are you making the most of your on-site messages to stop abandoning visitors?

With timely cart abandonment popups, you can convince more visitors to stay on your site, collect warm leads, gather valuable insights, and increase your sales.

The best part is, you don’t have to discount your products or offer free shipping to every visitor in order to achieve these goals.

In this article, you’ll read seven little-known strategies to convert abandoning visitors into customers. Plus, I’ll show you my favorite cart abandonment popup examples from top e-commerce brands.

Table of Contents

• 1. Nudge (Some) Visitors with Free Shipping
• 2. Host a Giveaway
• 3. Promote Special Offers
• 4. Personalize Your On-Site Messages
• 5. Offer an Alternative
• 6. Convert Abandoning Visitors Warm Leads
• 7. Ask for Feedback

1. Nudge (Some) Visitors with Free Shipping

Visitors might leave your site without completing their order for several reasons: 

• An underoptimized checkout process; 
• The lack of a satisfaction guarantee; 
• A simple distraction you can’t foresee;
• The list goes on

But the number one reason for cart abandonment, according to Baymard, is unexpected extra costs, such as shipping.

Offering free shipping on your site doesn’t only increase conversions, but it also urges visitors to spend more.

In fact, 93% of consumers tend to buy more products if the online store offers free shipping.

If you already offer free shipping, you might be thinking that it’s enough to write it down on your product pages.

But free shipping is only an incentive if you nudge visitors with it when they’re about to leave their cart.

So if you’re offering free shipping, make sure you always remind your visitors about it with a timely popup.

Here’s the popup Kate Spade displays when you’re about to leave your basket:

With the title “Congratulations!,” the company gets your attention and informs you that you qualify for both free shipping and free returns.

Even though they include in the checkout details that you don’t have to pay for shipping, Kate Spade makes sure that you are aware of it before you leave your items behind.

Given that not all e-commerce brands are as big as Kate Spade, you might consider offering free shipping only for expensive purchases.

If you’re a Sleeknote user and add the SiteData condition to your campaigns, you can detect a customer’s basket value and trigger a free shipping popup for visitors with over a certain amount of basket value.

Here’s how such a campaign might look like:

Change your campaign’s condition to exit-intent and you can convert abandoners with a tempting offer before they leave.

Editor’s Note

Try our tested and proven cart abandonment popup recipe and start recovering lost sales today.

2. Host a Giveaway

Most of the purchases on your site will take more than one session to complete. That’s a given.

After all, first-time visitors aren’t always ready to buy.

Instead of asking them to buy on their first visit, you can ask them to take another action, such as leaving their email address in exchange for something valuable.

Hosting a giveaway is one effective way of getting more visitors to sign up to your email list—without spending a fortune on gifts or lowering the perceived value of your products.

You might be thinking that on-site giveaways are only useful for collecting email addresses.

And you would be right in thinking so. But giveaways are especially effective when promoted to visitors abandoning their cart.

Wallstickerland illustrates this well:

Translation: “Wait … Don’t miss out on our competition to win a gift card worth 1,000 DKK for Wallstickerland!”

If you choose to leave your cart items behind, the company gently recommends you “not to miss out” on their giveaway.

This way, they trigger your fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) and give you a strong reason to leave your email address.

Plus, they get warm leads that they can follow up on with both abandoned cart emails and promotional emails when their giveaway ends.

Another approach you can take is nudging your visitors to complete their purchase within a time limit in order to participate in your giveaway.

Here’s an example of how that might look:

For these type of cart abandonment popups, a countdown timer is a must-have to drive a sense of urgency and scarcity.

3. Promote Special Offers

Even though abandoning visitors are not ready to buy from you, they are already in the decision stage of your sales funnel. Why? Because they took an important step in becoming a customer by adding an item to their cart.

Maybe the timing or the price wasn’t right for them.

This means that even if they didn’t buy the product at this moment, they might be interested in the item in the future (especially if/when it goes on sale).

So why don’t you let them know when your next big sale is approaching?

That’s exactly what Chubbies does when you’re about to abandon your cart:

The company lets you know when the sale will take place and what you should expect from it, even if you’re not ready to buy at this point.

But here’s the twist: They add a second layer of discounting to it if you place an order today.

If they had only announced the next big sale in their cart abandonment popup, it would delay your purchase rather than incentivize you to buy now. Why? Because if you know there’s a big sale approaching, why should you buy anything now?

That’s why if you complete your order today, they offer you an extra 15% on top of a big sale.

(And it sounds too good to miss.)

With this popup, Chubbies not only aims to reduce cart abandonment but also turn buyers into repeat customers.

If you want to use this strategy, you can improve this popup by;

1. Focusing more on the benefit of completing the purchase now, instead of giving too many details about the upcoming sale;
2. Including a countdown timer to drive urgency;
3. Adding a benefit-driven call-to-action (CTA) button, such as “Claim Extra 15% Off.”

4. Personalize Your On-Site Messages

Personalization is no longer a luxury for e-commerce sites. It’s a must.

Online consumers expect and desire a more personalized shopping experience and they’re willing to share their data in exchange for it.

Many e-commerce sites welcome their return visitors with personalized copy or make relevant product recommendations. But few marketers go above and beyond to personalize their on-site messages.

We know from customer data, and our own experiences, that online stores that provide personalized offers achieve higher conversion rates.

By personalizing your cart abandonment popups, you can remind abandoning visitors what they are about to miss out on.

Here’s a brilliant cart abandonment popup example from Pandora:

When you add a product to your cart and go to leave their site before buying it, Pandora displays a popup with the picture of your cart item.

They also trigger your FOMO with the headline “Don’t miss out on this great style!”

Showing the number of people viewing that item, they both point to the product’s scarcity of availability and add social proof to it.

Plus, they add a link button that reads “Find Your Local Store,” in case you want to visit a physical store and complete your purchase there.

Using the SiteData condition, you can personalize your cart abandonment popups based on the visitor’s basket items and convert them with a highly-relevant offer.

5. Offer an Alternative

Although clicking the “Add to Cart” button carries greater purchase intention, it doesn’t mean that the visitor is 100% sure about buying the product.

You might assume that your site visitors leave their carts due to reasons unrelated to your products: 

• They don’t want to pay for shipping; 
• They’re not comfortable with giving you their credit card details;
• They’re distracted by something else;
• And so on.

But what if the problem is directly related to your products?

Maybe the visitor couldn’t find what they were looking for and didn’t feel comfortable completing the purchase at this point.

Even if you provide your visitors a seamless site navigation, you should still consider that they may not always find the right product for them. So try offering them an alternative solution, instead.

Here’s how Højmark, a Danish travel agency, does that:

Højmark knows that different visitors have different needs. Instead of letting go of the visitors who can’t find their ideal vacation, the company offers them a custom quote.

Setting this campaign to work on exit-intent, Højmark converts visitors who can’t find a vacation that fits their needs by suggesting them an alternative.

If you want to personalize your custom offers based on the users’ visiting behavior, you can use the SiteData condition.

If a visitor adds items to their cart from a certain category before leaving your site, you can customize the contact form to fit their needs.

For example, if a visitor has cart items in the hiking category, you can frame the campaign copy as “Let our team of hiking experts offer you a custom quote…”

This type of cart abandonment campaign especially works well if you’re selling expensive products, offering wholesale, or handling custom orders.

6. Convert Abandoning Visitors Into Warm Leads

You might think that the only purpose of cart abandonment popups is to convince your visitors to stay on your site and to complete their purchase as soon as possible.

And you’re not wrong in thinking that.

In an ideal world, you would capture and convince all of your abandoning visitors to buy from you. But in reality, it takes more than that.

If you convince abandoning visitors to leave their email addresses, you can target them later with highly specific email campaigns. But in order to do this, you need to give them a valid reason to opt in.

Frame your campaign copy around the benefit you provide your visitors in exchange and they’ll be more likely to opt in.

Many e-commerce marketers use discount codes as an incentive and it surely is a great offer. But how can you stand out if everybody else is doing it?

Maybe you want to try something else or maybe you can’t afford to discount your products.

Luckily, there’s another value you can offer to abandoning visitors: saving their cart.

Here’s how your campaign might look like:

There are multiple reasons why online shoppers abandon their carts and lack of time is among the most common reasons.

Offering your abandoning visitors to save their cart will help you build an email list with warm leads that you can target with personalized email campaigns.

Make sure you hide this campaign from your existing subscribers so that they don’t see an invite to join a list that they’re already in.

7. Ask for Feedback

You’re likely working hard to collect valuable feedback from your customers and trying new methods to get positive testimonials.

But oftentimes, the critical feedback you need to grow your business will come from unsatisfied prospects.

If a visitor is leaving your site after adding an item to their basket, that’s a problem you need to work on.

And if you never ask, you’ll never know.

Asking short and simple questions to abandoning visitors can help you collect valuable insights on why your visitors leave their carts on checkout pages.

If you’re suffering from high cart abandonment rates or if you want to improve your conversions, try running a campaign where you ask your visitors why they’re leaving.

This way, you can find out the biggest barriers to purchase on your online store and use those insights in your cart abandonment popups.

Take this example by Novasol:

When Novasol ran this campaign on their site, they gathered more than 18,000 responses.

Why?

• The form is easy-to-fill with a limited number of input fields and radio buttons.
• The company doesn’t ask for any personal information, such as name or email address, and makes it clear that all answers are anonymous. This way, visitors feel more comfortable about giving their honest opinion without being targeted with email campaigns later.

Add a URL condition to make sure your campaign is only visible on relevant pages, such as your checkout page, and show it only to abandoning visitors by using the exit-intent condition.

Conclusion

There’s a common misconception that a good cart abandonment popup must promise visitors a discount code.

As you’ve seen in the examples above, you don’t necessarily have to discount your products in order to convert more abandoning visitors into customers.

Try these seven strategies to grow your email list, collect feedback, and increase your sales—without sacrificing the perceived value of your products.