How To Turn Abandoned Carts Into Sales — Menachem Shechter | Why 40% Cart Abandonment is a Problem, Why Unanswered Questions Lead to Abandonment, Why WhatsApp Beats Email for Cart Recovery, Why AI Ensures 24/7 Cart Recovery (#353)

In this episode, we tackle a common problem for online stores: shoppers who leave items in their cart without buying. 
 
Our guest Menachem Shechter, CEO of Benzakais Growth Agency, shares how using WhatsApp instead of emails helps stores recover more abandoned carts and close more sales. 
 
Topics discussed in this episode:  

• Why cart abandonment remains a 40% problem for e-commerce 
• How shopping psychology affects email recovery campaigns 
• Why WhatsApp outperforms email for cart recovery 
• What makes real-time messaging crucial for closing sales 
• How unanswered questions lead to abandoned purchases 
• Why AI-powered responses provide 24/7 cart recovery 
• How WhatsApp recovery succeeds in global markets 
• Why traditional CRO may be less effective than cart recovery 
• What makes WhatsApp the preferred channel for customer engagement 
  
  

Links & Resources 

Website: https://cartkeeper.co/ 
Shopify App Store: https://apps.shopify.com/sp-recovery-monkey 

Get access to more free resources by visiting the show notes at
https://t.ly/8BA_v 

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Download the Ecommerce Conversion Handbook for store optimization tips at https://tinyurl.com/CRO-ebook

Best Apps to Grow Your eCommerce Store: https://ecommercecoffeebreak.com/best-shopify-marketing-tools-recommendations/

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Transcript

Welcome to the e commerce coffee break podcast. In today's episode, we talk about card abandonment and how you can fix this issue. Joining me on the show is Menachem Shechter, CEO at benzakais. com. So let's dive right into it. 

This is the e commerce coffee break. A top rated Shopify growth podcast dedicated to Shopify merchants.

And business owners looking to grow their online stores. Learn how to survive in the fast changing e commerce world with your host, Claus Lauter, and get marketing advice you can't find on Google. Welcome to the show. 

Hello and welcome to another episode of the eCommerce Coffee Break Podcast. Today we want to discuss why too many cards in your store are still left uncovered.

And we want to look into tools that can help you to fix that. Joining me on the show today is Menachem Shechter. He is the CEO of Benzakais Growth Agency. Since founding the agency in 2014, Menachem has built A team of 13 experts specializing in digital marketing and development with an expertise for managing complex campaigns and creating custom tools for e commerce sites specifically within the Shopify ecosphere.

So let's welcome him to the show. Hi Menachem. How are you today? 

Great. How are you? 

I'm very well. Great to have you on the show. Let's talk about the problem that pretty much every store has out there. Abandoned cards. Why is that such a big problem still in 2024? Yes, 

it is. It's still a problem. It's still a problem because most of our customers, they need to revisit the choice.

They want to buy them. They probably have been in this store before, but they need a time to think about it. They need, they need to, to consult. And it's, it will, it will be, it stays. Always it stays in the in the cart. Actually, our numbers said that it's about 14 percent of the purchase start with a abandoned cart.

They might be back, they might not. But 40 percent we left, they left the cart abandoned. 

Okay, 40 percent obviously, that's a high number and people get distracted, they don't find their credit card. So there's plenty of different reasons why people do not finalize the checkout. So what do you see on strategies in the past and now that merchants are using to combat card abandonment?

The most 

ways that the merchant try to try to recover those cards. Uh, actually through email and some ways that, uh, that used to be very popular during the last decade, we send email and emails and emails. We send coupons, a discount, a discount and some many, many surprises and benefits. But. We don't really communicate.

We just send a, an email or another benefit via SMS or some something else, but not in channel that you can communicate with the customer. And that was that one of the, the most problem we, we notice during the, during the years, we work on a with Shopify merchants, owners. 

Give me an example why emails are not working so well or why people are, I don't know, not really reacting on emails anymore.

I think people do react on email, but it's not the same platform when, when the customer used to work on, on the shop. We spend a lot of our media budget through Instagram, through Facebook, through TikTok. We bring a lot of, a lot of customers to the store. They used to be in one app, Instagram. And then, they go to our car, to our shop, they put the goods in the cart, but they abandoned it.

Suddenly we send them to the, to the, uh, office, office email wall, office email, they should go to the desktop and open the email. Actually, we, they probably will open the, the abandoned cart email, but they will be in very different state of mind. Most of them, the me, the, the merchant are a, they might be an, an impulse buy.

And those impulse buy, you want to keep your, to keep the customer in the same state of mind when they use the, when they used to be during, during the navigating in this, in the shop. So if, uh, if a user go on, on the, on his iPhone and try and put another thing into the cart. And then an extra one. And then he said, okay, but let me, let me think about it.

And he put, put down the iPhone, his iPhone. If I send him 15 minutes later, an email, he might get it on the iPhone. Everybody has an email app, but it's not the same state of mind. Actually, we found from our experience that newsletters are very effective when we want to take, we want to take the user from the beginning.

In an email will be very effective because we don't because we send it to a new journey. But if you just click just last, just last button before the, before the purchase. Email, uh, seems to be not effective enough to recover the cart. You want to, you want to catch him in the very same state as he, as the customer was during the shopping.

Mm hmm. And I understand the problem. So that's, that's, there's a lot of psychology obviously in there, as you said. Impulse Buy, you're right now in a moment that you want to buy something. And five minutes later, your mind is somewhere completely different and you're not interested anymore. Um, so how do you come up with a solution?

What, what's the solution to this issue? 

We had, I think, uh, over a 200 Shopify merchant during the years. And we, we, we built the stores, we built them a marketing tool. So we wrote them in the newsletters and we grew with them together. But. This issue that you want to keep the customer in the same state of mind, we couldn't find a solution.

Not, not something that he can, can increase him in significant rate. And he would, you have a saying, to move the needle. So, we couldn't find, we couldn't find something that actually can move this needle. And, During the, the popularity of WhatsApp, for instance, it's not, uh, it does not need to actually be WhatsApp, but it's very popular.

So during the popularity of WhatsApp, specifically in specific countries like Brazil, like India, like, like Israel, Middle East, Some s in Europe, the WhatsApp is very, is very powerful tool. People stay there all the time. It's general, it's a general tool. It's it's equivalent like, uh, to the cell phone itself.

PE it's not medium, it's, it's the cell phone. People having talks, they sending messages, and if you communicate with the, with the shopper in, in WhatsApp, he's not actually noticed. But he left the, the shock. Because the communication is still going and more important than that, actually, most of the time when, when the customer leave the cart abandoned, the customer has a question, has an unsolved issue.

Maybe it's the shipping time, the platform, it might be many other things. And if he can communicate on WhatsApp, he can trust that he's going to get an answer from the, from the merchant itself. It's very interesting because we try to measure how many questions the customer has, has before he completed the purchase.

So we, we run, we run a tool and we send the abandoned cards, notifications. And the customer's reply was a question. Yes, I, I very, I very like this t shirt, but I'm not sure, not sure how, uh, how fast this, this teacher, teacher can arrive, or I'm not sure how I've seen the, the, I've seen the picture on the store, but I'm not sure if it's fitting or not, can you give me another picture?

So if it's, if the store stay idle and nobody, and there is no communication, or maybe they had a button for communication. The customer won't necessarily try to bother and send a reply. We get the reply, but we, we, we, we get some requests about, about the goods in the shop, but not necessarily the question you arrive for the customer who wants to buy.

But if you ask them, tell them, hi, it's Menachem from the Shopify store. I just want to be, to be sure that you get everything you need. And, uh, and the purchase, uh, gone fluently. If not, you can, you can always, uh, you can always, uh, complete it here. There is a link sent, uh, directly to the, to the abandoned cart.

And one click, they finish that. If you have a further question, uh, leave it here and I will reply you. And suddenly you get two or three questions and you complete the purchase. It's amazing. Actually, in some cases, for the, for the next time they won't bother to go to the, to the store. They leave the question on the, on the WhatsApp and they try to make, make a new order.

I like the approach. You take sort of the time delay out of it. And I think it's sort of a bit more of a, um, you as a merchant, you open the conversation. It's like in a store as a sales guy would come over and say, can I help you? Do you have any questions? Um, so I think that's just more immediate communication with the client.

Now, what kind of data do you need to capture to, to make it work? Obviously you need the WhatsApp number or the telephone number, or how do you get this communication started? 

The Shopify API is, uh, He's very deep and hey, provide a lot of information and we use an app. Get the information since the first session in store.

We want to want to bother the customer, but actually if it's, if it's a, if it's a 10 customer, you get it right away. You can see, you can get a notification when the return customer went back to the store. To the store, he has some, he left something in the cart and you know, just, he just get in and you can send him a notification.

I would not necessarily recommend on that, but regarding the information, you get it right away. For new, for new customer. It has been, it has been, uh, collected. It might be collected in the abandoned cart itself, which is most common. And from other tools that users, uh, leave during the store, many stores have a checkbox for, uh, to get updates and other, uh, other features.

But the most common and very important is the abandoned cart page in the checkout page. 

Now, obviously on the merchant side, you need to monitor the incoming messages. Um, how does that look from, from my side, from the seller's side? 

Actually, it depends. Until two years ago, you, you have two options. You might be a big, big Shopify store, probably Shopify Plus store, and you have a team, like the very similar US customer service team.

You have a team and get he get a ticket. Not on emails. Not on email and templates, just on a WhatsApp web. And the other option, if you just started to shop, and you're very dedicated for every sale, every sales matter. So, you live, uh, live, you spend your day waiting for the ka ching sound on the Shopify, on the Shopify app.

You start getting next to the certification, you start getting questions, not on Shopify inbox. And you have to be sure that the customer never left. If you just go to grab some coffee and you didn't reply back, the customer left and he get an email and we start all, we start again, the email, the email dance again.

You just get a WhatsApp, the customer can leave, but he is just get the WhatsApp and you start to communicate. So if you just have one man show and you have your own Shopify store, you just need to reply on the WhatsApp. You can have a different line. It's very popular today. Thus was the circumstances until two, three years ago.

But now actually the communication got improved and actually you can, you have very valuable AI tools that can give service 24 7. The AI learn, your, your, your qa, q&a in the terms of the, you read the bylaw, read everything. He know how. And you give a very, uh, high quality service on WhatsApp right away.

And the shop owner is able to take over in every minute. And you take over and he helps and he can give you, he might give a discount if it's needed, he can make a clarification. The AI tools actually is very useful for questions that They are very common, and he understands them, and he can reply. If there is a need for a special treatment, it might be a discount, it might be, it might be to send the purchase earlier, or something like that.

Something that some kind of prioritize. Still cannot do that. He can have his terms and say, okay, I wanna, I'm, I'm, I'm going to prefer this one. I, I have the permission to give until a 10, a 10 percent discount, but in any moment, the shop owner can get a ride over and maybe, uh, and even upgrade the service.

No, 

that's very smart. And as you said, the advantage there, it can run 24 seven. You don't need to have somebody sitting in the front all the, all of the and specifically for smaller merchants, smaller medium enterprises. Um, that's a big advantage there. Now you have developed a app for Shopify for that. I understand.

Tell me a little bit about it. 

Yes. Actually after about, I think it's about eight years that we build a tailor made. Tools for Shopify to, to create this kind of service. It was, uh, it took a lot of time and effort to develop it. They don't make to every, every different story specification. We decided to try to create a shelf product.

An app that can service a lot of, uh, a lot of merchant at once. And actually, because the, because of the API and the rest of the tool, the rest of the Shopify tools have been improved so we could, so we Could create generic tools that give the same quality product. We create Card Keeper. Actually, Card Keeper aim to do all the above that I just described, but with an app, not dedicated to, not, not sophisticated AEI that need to run separately, don't need to, to train.

It's an easy plug and play app. Just. You just insert it in your store and you can run, you can run with it. And it try and try and helps to recover abandoned cars. It helps to meet the customer at the right time, the right moment. And it's followed the principle we described earlier. . 

I like that you took the experience from hundreds of clients that you worked with and then basically came up with a solution that helps everyone.

Who's your perfect customer. Are there specific industries or verticals where this works very well? 

It's very important question because, actually, because the, the better, the better. Phase one, mainly on WhatsApp. We have, we have merchant based on a, uh, in the United States, but actually. The perfect merchant will be ba based on the other countries.

It'll based in, in Brazil, it'll be based in Europe, and you'll based in the Middle East and based based in India. There are a lot of countries that, WhatsApp is very popular in the, a lot of, there are a lot of business and communication one on it. So, Mm-Hmm. countries like Brazil, uh, in South America, uh, Europe and Middle East are perfect for their, this kind of.

Besides that, I think the merchant meet the abandoned cart issue, not in the first day he opened the Shopify store, but Very soon afterwards and, and it will take him hand by hand until it will be, it will, it will be a huge store on Shopify Plus. I think if you have two months, three months, one year experience on Shopify, you, I don't know if you noticed, but Your store bleeds from this issue and that's the time you need to find a very reliable solution for that.

Now tell me a little bit about the kind of homework that I need to do. Say a store needs to have a certain volume, certain traffic, then it only makes sense. But also you need to have a dedicated WhatsApp number or how does that work? What kind of preparation do I need to have? 

Actually, you don't have to dedicate a WhatsApp number.

Because the app generates one for you. We highly recommend to connect your own WhatsApp number, because you have your reputation, and people used to communicate with the same WhatsApp number. So we recommend that you connect your own WhatsApp number, or the one dedicated for the merchant. But you don't actually, it's not a, it's not mandatory at all.

You just install the, when you install the, the app, the right, the same moment. You saw the app, you get dedicated WhatsApp number and you can run and start recover accounts. 

Okay. That seems very straightforward. I mean, that's a big plus that you don't need to care about other sources, like sourcing another WhatsApp number that comes with the app.

Tell me a little bit about the pricing structure. How do you charge for that? 

Our main goal is to create a plan that is very easy and reliable for the merchants. So we, we based on the volume. If you have a started, a started plan with a small, a smaller merchant, you can, you can have about 19 per month and you can recover up to 10 cards and it might suit you.

If on next level, which most of the customers are, you can, uh, you can recover up to 50 cards, which, if you can make the math, if you, if the a c is about $70, so you can multiply it 50. The planet suit for you is the, is the poor plan, and it costs, uh, $49 per month. And you can, and you can cover 15 cards every month.

And the last one is everything that's above that. It costs 99 and you can recover, you can recover hundreds and thousands of dollars every month. 

Yeah, I think that's a no brainer because probably depending on your average order value, if you recover one order that otherwise you would not have your monthly fees already covered with that.

So I think it's really like a no brainer. So before we come to the end of our coffee break today, is there anything that you want to share with our listeners that we haven't covered yet? 

During the years. We and other Entropy Fire experts invest a lot of effort and time to increase the conversion rate.

We thought and created methods for conversion rate optimization, how to improve, how to change the size. The size, color for every button in the store create a very complicated flows from the homepage, the category page, and for product page. And it's very important from certain sizes. It's important, but it's amazing how much effort and time you need to get very.

Small change in the conversion rate to get, to get to, to get this, uh, needle move. And it's funny how many, how many cut left a abandoned? And you have a list. You have that list on orders, and I'm not sure if every mention, uh, take a look on that. But you have the, the, you have the. When we created this app, the first important information that we want to communicate is how much money left on this abandoned cart.

So we created a dashboard just to calculate how much money is left unrecovered. During the last month, during the last year, And we start, we continue improving and improving the conversion rate optimization and the rest of the time and effort and resources, resources in that. But we neglect something that the, the low hanging fruit.

It's very easy. Just need to, to put a spot on the, on the right place. 

Yeah, I think that's a very important thing that you mentioned there. So basically, you work your way in conversion rate optimization from the cart backwards, because once you have somebody going all the way through the funnel to the cart, and then they leave, all the work that you did before is sort of useless.

So you want to make sure that this is the most important point, you want to convert them. And as 40 percent of people leave the cart, right? Um, if you convert a good percentage of these, that's, as I said, low hanging fruit, that's easy money to get in. And I think your app will help us that big time. Where can people find out more about you guys?

We have our website for sure, cardkeeper. co. And we are on the, on the app store. It's very easy to navigate. You can take a look in the card and ask us questions. Actually, you can ask us on WhatsApp too. It's very easy. Just click on the button. 

Okay, excellent. I think that would be a good proof that people contact you directly on WhatsApp.

I will put the links in the show notes as always, then you're just one click away. And I hope a lot of people will try it out and hopefully recover a lot of abandoned cards in their store. Menachem, thanks so much for giving us an insight on how to optimize your card and talk soon. so 

much. for having me.

Hey, 

Claus here. Thank you for joining me on another episode of the e commerce coffee break podcast. Before you go, I'd like to ask two things from you. First, please help me with the algorithm so I can bring more impactful guests on the show. It will make it also easier for others to discover the podcast.

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