Cart Abandonment As a Website Experience?!

Most of us are familiar with cart abandonment as an email campaign. However, we believe it can also be reimagined as a website experience. Here's how...

About the Author:
Co-founder of Datacop, agency that fulfils marketing operation roles in large eCommerce companies such as OluKai, Melin, Roark, Visual Comfort and Company, Dedoles and others.

Cart abandonment email campaigns were among the earliest examples of personalized communication in eCommerce. When a customer showed intent to purchase an item by adding it to their cart but didn’t complete the checkout, businesses—if they had consent to contact the customer—would send an email. These emails serve as both simple reminders about the abandoned item and as opportunities to offer additional incentives, such as discount codes, to encourage purchase completion.

This type of campaign remains highly effective. Even today, cart abandonment emails are among the best-performing automated campaigns for many eCommerce businesses.

For customers who provide their phone number, SMS messages can complement the email sequence. For those without email or phone contact details, retargeting via paid channels is another option, although it’s becoming increasingly expensive.

While cart abandonment emails are common, today we’ll discuss a less-explored approach: cart abandonment website experiences. This concept, while promising, hasn’t gained much traction yet. One reason might be that implementing email campaigns is often easier than deploying website personalization strategies.

However, advancements in eCommerce technology over the past decade have made solutions like cart abandonment website experiences more accessible than ever.

In this article, we’ll demonstrate a simple yet effective cart abandonment website personalization use case. We implemented it on a dummy eCommerce store using only Bloomreach Engagement—without touching the website’s source code.

Let’s dive in.

Cart Abandonment Hero Image

One of the most effective ways to explain a concept is to show it in action. So, let me walk you through how this use case works. In the GIF below, you’ll see that I’m initially greeted by a generic hero image on the website. However, this image changes dynamically once I add an item to the cart. Take a look:

As shown in the GIF above, the initial hero image is a standard one displayed to most website visitors.

However, after adding an item to the cart and returning to the homepage, the hero image updates dynamically. It now highlights the item in the cart, includes the product name, and features an updated CTA button that directs the customer straight to the cart, making it easier to complete the purchase.

Additionally, we added a small message to create urgency by showing how many units of the product were sold in the past 30 days.

Target Audience

Based on our analysis, approximately 50% of customers who abandon products in their cart return to the website within 30 days.

In fact, depending on the size of your email subscriber list, this group may exceed the audience eligible to receive cart abandonment emails. This is because not all cart abandoners have given consent to receive emails. This reveals a compelling opportunity: utilizing website personalization for this segment can be a powerful driver of incremental revenue.

Final Thoughts

This use case pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in eCommerce, redefining the shopping experience for a new era—one where personalization is truly meaningful and tailored to customer needs.

We believe that the full potential of personalization in eCommerce is yet to be realized, and we’re eager to be part of shaping that future.

If you’re interested in implementing this or similar personalization strategies, we’re confident that we’re the right partner for these initiatives. Not only do we rely on proven tactics that consistently deliver results, but we also embrace innovative ideas that have yet to be fully tested in real-world scenarios—like this one.

We have the expertise to implement these strategies as efficiently as possible, evaluate their impact, and calculate their added value. With our resources, we can handle the process from start to finish.

If your company is committed to innovation and turning tomorrow’s standards into today’s reality, we’d love to work with you. Click the button below to get in touch with us.