Best Abandoned Cart Email Strategies for EDD

Are you spending loads of your hard-earned money on driving more visitors to your Easy Digital Downloads WordPress website using various eCommerce paid tools and or via Facebook Ads or Google Adwords, yet not seeing the revenue follow? For most eCommerce businesses, one of the biggest leaks in their sales and marketing funnel is shoppers who add products to their cart, but then abandon them at checkout.

Cart abandonment is a rising challenge for all retail marketers as well as the most common and most inevitable scenario. SalesCycle reported that approximately 75.6% of carts were abandoned in 2018 and unfortunately, this is a number that has slowly been increasing in recent years. That means that only 1 in every 4 customers actually finishes their purchase.

Source: https://blog.salecycle.com/stats/infographic-the-remarketing-report-q2-2016/

This is why marketers usually turn towards emails to help recover these abandoned sales. Good Abandoned Cart Emails are so important for eCommerce marketers. With a great eCommerce marketing automation strategy (including the timing and message), they can set it up and have it recover sales on autopilot. This type of eCommerce email is one of the most effective, revenue-generating emails that you can send to prospects.

But if you’ve never set up a cart abandonment email, or you’re not satisfied with your current results, you’re probably wondering what makes great cart abandonment emails. That’s what we’ll be looking at today.

What are Abandoned Cart Emails?

Abandoned Cart Emails are messages sent automatically whenever a customer comes to your webstore and adds an item to their cart, but doesn’t buy the item. These emails can also be triggered when the customer abandons the checkout flow.

In other words, this is a follow-up email sent to someone who has added items to their cart and gotten through a portion of the checkout and then left the site without purchasing. Abandoned cart emails work to remind customers of items they left in cart – enticing them to come back to purchase what they are already so close to buying.

Consider these abandoned cart statistics from Moosend:

Source: Moosend

There are different types of emails you can send to your customers. But with numbers like that, cart reminder emails give some of the highest returns on your investment.

Now it may not be possible to persuade all cart-abandoners to go through checkout and triple your sales. Some customers may have never had the intention to purchase in the first place. But it’s worth putting in the effort to resolve as many lingering hesitations as you can because a significant percentage of them are persuadable.

Why do customers abandon their carts?

We can’t eliminate shopping cart abandonment. But, we can try to understand its root cause so as we can properly plan ahead and deal with it. Here’s a survey Baymard Institute has conducted containing reasons for Abandonment during Checkout.

Source: Baymard survey of 2,854 consumers, 2019

Now we can rehab our webstores by taking into consideration the above cart abandonment reasons. Work your way on making your checkout process smooth and hassle-free. But again, shopping cart abandonment cannot be totally eliminated. Other reasons why they abandon their carts are: visitors are just browsing, found a better price elsewhere and maybe suddenly have decided against buying it.

Abandoned Cart Email Best Practices

Even though we can’t eliminate cart abandonment entirely, we can minimize the likelihood of it happening – by using abandoned cart emails. Good abandoned cart email is one of the most effective, revenue-generating emails that you can send to prospects.

And in this article, we will show you some outstanding cart recovery email strategies that will help you lower your cart abandonment rate and increase your bottom line.

In order to be successful, there are some important things you need to include in your cart abandonment emails. They are enumerated as follows:

  1. High converting subject lines
  2. Include abandoned product
  3. Keep email simple and personal
  4. Offer Discount Codes/Coupons
  5. Mail Frequency and Creating Urgency
  6. Add CTA buttons and Contact Details
  7. Trust and Credibility through Product Reviews / Social Proofs
  8. Display your other products

Let’s explain each of the above Abandoned Cart Email Best Practices.

Unique and Effective Subject Line

If you like the subject line, and if you trust the sender, you will open it. If not, the chances are high that you won’t open it. In fact, 35% of email recipients open an email based on subject line alone.

This means that a good and effective subject line for abandoned cart email can grab the attention of the customer and increase open and click rates.

When recipients read your subject lines, they should be reminded of what they left behind. A well-written subject line for abandoned cart email can go a long way toward piquing the interest of reluctant customers.

Include abandoned product

Showcase exactly what was left behind in your customer’s cart. Reminding the product what they have missed out is very important. Make sure to add the product along with the product image, description, benefits, and features, etc. It’s not enough anymore to just include the name of the product. The image is a must along with the product details.

People might not remember what products had them clicking the “add to cart” button. After all, they may not really remember what product they abandoned if they had a particularly busy looking and scrolling through different webstores.

Keep email simple and personal

Besides attractive images and contrasting CTA buttons, it’s important that you have a convincing and personalized text and content that’s ultimately pushing towards conversions. With 94% of businesses saying how critical email personalization is to their success, basic personalization such as including the customer’s first name in the salutation or subject line is proven effective and very important.

An excellent subject line may contain some important points such as:

  • Customize the message by including their names or product names.
  • Make use of some great offers to bribe them in opening the email.
  • Play the idea “Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO) to your customers.
  • Make it short and simple but alluring enough for them to open the email.

Also, it’s important never to overload readers with information. Instead, focus on what’s necessary for the prospect to return to their cart and complete their order. Writing short emails is an effective way of ensuring that you hold the reader’s attention long enough to do this.

Offer Discount Codes/Coupons

Most customers abandon their carts because the final price is more than what they expected. And there’s a simple way to recover the customers who have been scared away by the final price: issue a discount.

Offering discounts for customers to complete their purchases can really work in your favor. But, be aware of the pitfalls. A common concern is training customers to abandon transactions on purpose to receive a discount.

If you were to offer a discount in your email, it could be the final push they need to complete their purchase. Save your discounts for the end. If you send a sequence of emails, save that coupon code for the very last one. This is your last shot at getting the customer to convert, after all.

Mail Frequency and Creating Urgency

Mail Frequency is a very essential element in your cart recovery process. When to send an abandoned cart email? Many stores prefer sending the cart recovery email right after the visitor abandoned the cart. Sending the email within an hour after the customer abandoned the cart, is the most preferred time because:

  • The email will arrive before the customer totally forgets about the cart;
  • The customer is still in their “buying” mood;
  • The email will arrive before the customer decides to purchase elsewhere.

Also, sending additional email reminders will greatly improve our chances of success. We can earn more revenue from abandoned carts and increase sales conversion by following up with a series of emails.

  • Email #2 must be sent after 24 hours, after the first one. Usually, the customers shop at the same time of the day. Also, we’ll remind them once again of their cart contents and of any discounts.
  • Email #3 must be sent after 72 hours, after the previous email. Use a persuasion technique of scarcity, by telling customers that the discount will expire soon. This is your last chance of converting the customer.

The most common way in creating a sense of urgency is by putting a limited time offers in the recovery emails we sent – usually free shipping or product discounts. This way, the customers will be more interested to take advantage of the discount and then continue with the purchase as soon as possible.

Add CTA buttons and Contact Details

Bold and attractive CTAs can really grab the attention of the shopper and push them towards an action you want them to take. Make it easy for the customer to finish buying the product. Let them know what they abandoned, show it (with a big image), then put the bold, easy-to-see, contrasting CTA right below that product image.

Another important thing to include in your contact information for people who want to reach out to ask further questions. There are many reasons why shoppers abandon carts. They may have extra questions and it’s a good idea to include your support contact info.

Trust and Credibility through Product Reviews / Social Proofs

Customers have become more careful especially first-time visitors on your website will need a little more convincing before opening up their wallets and proceed to purchase. This is where social proof can help you convert those first-time visitors or skeptical buyers.

The best way to do that is to use product ratings and reviews so that those prospects can see that other people (like themselves) have happily purchased from you before.

When 88% of consumers claim that ratings and reviews influenced their buying decision, this represents a big opportunity for you. Instead of just using this social proof on your website, you can use it in your abandoned cart reminder emails too.

Display your other products

People might have abandoned their shopping cart because they were unsure of their choice — maybe the item isn’t exactly what they had in mind. But, they might be sold on similar items they missed the first time.  Sometimes, offering alternatives to abandoned cart items can help return a missed sales opportunity.

With product recommendations, it’s easy to show off other stuff that your customers will love. (They might even like those options better.) Visitors might not have been completely sold on the items they added to their cart, but they might be interested in similar items they didn’t notice the first time on your site.

Conclusion: Start turning missed opportunities into recovered sales!

Too many eCommerce sites let potential revenue fly out the window because they don’t send people a friendly reminder that they left something behind. Improving your abandoned cart recovery is an incremental process that requires many smaller steps.

A good abandoned cart email contains many different elements which vary greatly from business to business. You might need to do a few testing to create an abandoned cart email that works for you and your audience. A great cart recovery campaign can make people remember you. 75% of shoppers plan on coming back to their abandoned cart. Quickly change their “plan” into “did” with abandoned cart emails that work. You see, abandoned cart emails are easy to set up, and really it should be something that everyone does give the high abandonment rates.

We are all aware that cart abandonment is an issue that can never be fully eliminated. But with some effort, we can at least recover a portion of our abandoned carts and to eventually turn those into actual orders. You can also read this article “How to effectively recover Abandoned Carts in eCommerce” to learn more. Don’t forget to apply the strategies above, and get started on recovering sales today.

How to effectively recover Abandoned Carts in eCommerce

Attracting customers to visit your eCommerce website is not easy, nor free. You struggle to conduct different and several marketing strategies such online marketing through emails, making use of social media platforms, some content and website strategies or even purchasing some paid aids, just to drive a huge amount of traffic.

When the customers finally get to your website, you have to actually sell your products, which is a whole different set of optimization challenges. They might actually add some products to their carts, but that doesn’t stop there. Suddenly, the analytics shows that they have left your site without completing their purchase, which is very alarming.

What is Cart Abandonment?

This is an eCommerce term that is used to define the actions of the customers when they add items to their online shopping cart but afterwards left the website without completing the purchase. Any item that enters the shopping cart but never makes it through the transaction is considered to be “abandoned”. This is an important aspect that business owners should pay careful attention to.

What are the causes of Cart Abandonment?

There are lots of reasons we can conclude as to why customers abandon their carts. The following are the top reasons:

Long and confusing checkout

Usually, customers only want simple terms and conditions at the checkout page, and which must be short and concise. They also have a short attention span and most likely will just abandon the checkout flow if it is too complex or time-consuming.

Concerns about payment security and options

According to Baymard, some people abandon checkouts because they don’t see the payment method they want or because their credit card is declined. Also, some customers have their own preferences on how they would like to pay, and only will complete a purchase if their preferred method is available.

Price might be too high

Nowadays, the customer browses through different sites and compare prices before making online purchases. Better pricing on other sites would prevent them to complete their purchase to your store as they are on the constant lookout for a better price until they are satisfied.

Only browsing and researching

Many users keep on adding items to their cart but don’t complete and go through with the purchase. They have a very low buying intent. We need strategies to make them reconsider and soon, to actually buy the products.

Unexpected high shipping cost

Statista says 63% of the American online shoppers will eventually abandon their carts if they discover that the shipping costs are too high, and by seeing how much their order would total with the shipping cost.

Poor website navigation

Statista says that this is an issue for 16% of the online shoppers. It’s definitely a turnoff when you land on a site and can’t easily find the items you want to buy. Baymard adds that 20% will abandon their carts if the site crashes or has major errors.

We can’t blame the customers by their personal reasons of why they didn’t proceed with the purchase. Also, there will always be people who just take pleasure in window shopping.

What are the effects of Cart Abandonment?

Based on the statistics made by Baymard Institute, 69.57% is the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate. This means that abandoned carts are actually costing us thousands! Almost every eCommerce business believes that Cart Abandonment is a very prominent event which will damage successful performance. The abandoned items are already potential revenue that we didn’t obtain as the transactions are not completed, which affects profit maximization.

We now wish that more people would actually complete a purchase instead of leaving their carts behind. Is there anything we can do about eCommerce abandoned carts? How can we draw them back to your site and win back those lost sales?

How to recover Abandoned Carts?

Recover Abandoned Carts
Recover Abandoned Carts in eCommerce now!

There are helpful and effective ways on how we can recover abandoned carts and therefore decrease our cart abandonment rate. This rate shows the percentage of potential customers who leave without buying anything compared to the total number of online carts created. If your cart abandonment rate is high it means that many of your customers begin their purchase process but do not go through with it, which is very alarming. It definitely needs our utmost attention.

With the help of the Cart Abandonment Rate, we can understand the shopping behaviour of our website visitors and customers. To recover abandoned carts, we need to reach out to our customers and encourage them to return and complete the checkout process. The following are some effective ways we can try and adapt so as to bring back our lost potential sales.

Email Automation

Email Automation is the solution!
Try out Email Automation now!

The first thing in recovering an abandoned cart is the need to reach out to customers and encourage them to return and complete the checkout process. One very powerful technique for recovering those is sending emails to remind people about what they left behind.

The pros of using an Email Automation in recovering abandoned carts are:

  • Very low cost
  • Automated and personalized
  • Great way to encourage sales
  • Very easy to track

While the cons are:

  • The customers may easily overlook the message
  • Others emails might go straight to their spam folders instead
Best Email Automation Tools

Here are some easy-to-use, reasonably-priced email automation tools that offer a range of features to engage prospects and increase sales.

  1. Mailchimp
  2. SendInBlue
  3. Drip
  4. ConvertKit
  5. Mailjet
  6. Infusionsoft
Cart recovery email contents

The most important element we should definitely take into consideration so we can avoid our emails to be overlooked is to make sure that our emails stand out – meaning we should think of a very strong subject line for it.

An excellent subject line may contain some important points such as:

  • Customize the message by including their name or product names.
  • Make use of some great offers to bribe them in opening the email.
  • Play the idea “Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO) to your customers.
  • Make it short and simple but alluring enough for them to open the email.

Once we successfully get them to open the email, next thing is we need to have a very interesting design and content. Our email design must be professional but compelling enough to get ahold of our customers attention. Then, it should contain combinations of messages, such as cart content, product recommendations, discounts, and also our contact details and other significant information.

The most important element of our recovery email is to remind them what they’re missing by listing specific products in their cart. We can then include a direct link to the customer’s saved cart. This way, we can spare their time and patience, so they can immediately check the abandoned carts they left. Another thing is we can list similar product recommendations in our email to give the customer other options or products he/she might be interested in.

Mail Frequency and Creating Urgency

Mail Frequency is a very essential element in your cart recovery process. Many stores prefer sending the cart recovery email right after the visitor abandoned the cart.

Sending the email within an hour after the customer abandoned the cart, is the most preferred time because:

  • The email will arrive before the customer totally forgets about the cart;
  • The customer is still in their “buying” mood;
  • The email will arrive before the customer decides to purchase elsewhere.

Another this is sending additional email reminders will greatly improve our chances of success. We can earn more revenue from abandoned carts and increase sales conversion by following up with a series of emails.

  • Email #2 must be sent after 24 hours, after the first one. Usually, the customers shop at the same time of the day. Also, we’ll remind them once again of their cart contents and of any limited time discounts.
  • Email #3 must be sent after 72 hours, after the previous email. Use a persuasion technique of scarcity, by telling customers that the discount will expire soon. This is your last chance of converting the customer.

The most common way in creating a sense of urgency is by putting a limited time offers in the recovery emails we sent – usually free shipping or product discounts. This way, the customers will be more interested to take advantage of the discount and then continue with the purchase as soon as possible.

How to prevent customers from abandoning their carts?

After knowing the process of how to recover abandoned carts through email automation, the next thing we have to know is how do we exactly prevent customers in abandoning their carts? We cannot actually completely wipe it out, but we need steps in order to lessen those and to further optimize our sales conversion.

Optimize webstore experience

It’s a definite turnoff for the customers when they land on a site and can’t easily find the items they wanted. If your site doesn’t work well for them, they’ll just go somewhere else. Because of that, we need strategies to make our customers stay, and therefore optimize our webstore experience.

This covers the experience your visitor will have while staying in your website and until before they actually get to the checkout page. They wanted their webstore browsing experience relevant and fast – working seamlessly no matter what device (desktop or mobile) they use to make a purchase.

Website Usability

Usability is a necessary condition of our website that we needed to look after. For example, optimizing your website navigation and search options will help people to easily find the products they wanted.

Some reasons that triggers the potential customers to leave are:

  • Your website is very difficult and complicated to use.
  • Customers easily get lost in the website.
  • The browsing experience is very slow.
  • The customers are experiencing major bugs while navigating the website.
  • Your website is simply not user-friendly, and others.

An effective start in improving our website’s usability is to conduct user testing. We can try testing different user types to identify all possible errors and bugs. Running many small tests and revising between each one so we can fix the usability flaws as we identify them. It is the best way to increase the quality of user experience. This is a very important step we should always do before launching our website.

Simplify checkout process and provide multiple payment options

Simplify the Checkout process and provide multiple payment options
One great way to optimize the user’s experience in your webstore is to simplify the checkout process.

Customers having to put a lot of time and effort in completing a single transaction is a nuisance to them and often a reason to quit mid-process of purchasing. Indeed, Statista shows that approximately 9% of shoppers abandon their carts because of a long or confusing checkout process. Baymard further emphasizes this issue, citing that 1 of 4 shoppers abandons their cart in the last quarter of the checkout process due to a long or complicated process.

A need to deliver a fast and smooth checkout process is a must-have on our website. To prevent a long and confusing checkout, we should maintain the use of a minimum number of pages for the checkout process and also a minimum number of form elements to be fulfilled in the checkout page. Our page should also have all the necessary buttons and options that would bring easiness throughout the whole purchasing process.

Another essential thing is to offer multiple payment options for our customers. Digital and mobile payment options are now widely-used. Also, 44 percent of shoppers are happy to add their credit card to a mobile payment solution, then pay with that instead.

The following are some payment options we can try on adding to our checkout process:

  • Visa
  • MasterCard
  • Discover
  • American Express
  • PayPal
  • Local payment methods. For example AliPay in China.

Lastly, we must make sure that we have payment trust seals and are easy to see—people need to know their payment information is safe.

Conclusion: Solving the eCommerce Abandoned Cart Problem

We are all aware that cart abandonment is an issue that can never be fully eliminated. But with some effort, we can at least recover a portion of our abandoned carts and to eventually turn those into actual orders. We shouldn’t just give up with our abandoned carts as it is a very crucial thing that affects our profit maximization. Now, you already know how to recover abandoned carts for your eCommerce websites!

How To Optimize Sales Conversion For Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) Store

Optimizing sales conversion for Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) is not a rocket science. It requires mainly keen and steady observation, attention to detail, brainstorming, assembling good ideas, ongoing testing and analyzing the results in a systematic way. Doing all this in a disciplined manner allows you to better understand your sales conversion process and therefore also increases it.

Sales conversion techniques in essence are the same as those used for any eCommerce stores such as WooCommerce. However, the techniques need to be understood and adjusted in light of selling a digital product, not a physical product.

Unfortunately, lots of EDD vendors still don’t succeed even when trying to implement basic conversion technique. That’s why we are here to review the best practices on how to improve sales conversions and in this way can offer you another shot to rock the conversion rate of your digital download store.

How To Find Your Current Conversion Rate?

First, you have to know your current EDD store’s conversion rate best by installing Google Analytics and a plugin which feeds conversion data to Google Analytics such as the EDD Enhanced eCommerce Tracking Plugin.

Google Analytics will give you the tool at hand to measure the sales conversion rate and can track any improvement made over time.

With Google Analytics you can also drill down in your reports, identify the current conversion rate of each of the pages in your store by utilizing the Landing pages report from Google Analytics or analyze from which your marketing sales channels originate.

So regardless of the status of your present conversion rates, here are some points to ponder to help you rev up your sales conversion on your EDD store.

How To Improve Conversion Rates for your Easy Digital Downloads Webstore

Here we have collected a list of tips on how to improve the conversion rates for your Easy Digital Downloads (EDD) webstore:

1. Choose a Visitor Friendly Layout for your Homepage

Your homepage is primarily the face of your EDD store. It presents everything your visitors want to see thus it should capture their attention, grab their curiosity and pull them in instantly. This is why your digital download store has to have an inviting front window to let people see right away what’s in store for them.

If you can put up appealing and motivating themes on your website and making navigation for your visitors an entertaining and fruitful activity,  visitor will more likely stay on your homepage.

Also, install easy-to-use plugins and tabs that every potential buyer would not find hard to use. In other words, a good web developer should put up an appealing theme on your website’s profile but with functional features and a user-friendly interface.

This also refers to the visual appeal of your website. Remember that it will only take a few seconds for a potential buyer to process in his brain about your website’s contents. So in this short period of time, you need to capture his attention with clear images and texts that are visually appealing and informatively exciting.

2. Build Your EDD Store To Be Mobile Responsive

Create a website that will be highly responsive to mobile gadgets. More than half of the internet browsers all over the world are using mobile gadgets in finding all types of products, services including apps, plugins and the like on the web. So don’t confine your website only for PC viewing capability but also optimize it for mobile accessibility. 

Check this site to see if your website is mobile-friendly. 

3. Provide Sufficient Information on Your Website

There’s a study in 2014 B2B Web Usability Report that among internet browsers who are looking for products and services online, 44% of them leave the sites they visit because of the lack of information or phone numbers of the vendors on the homepage. In this scenario, it becomes obvious that the absence of contact information can greatly reduce your credibility as a vendor.  

4. Write Clear Product Descriptions

Product descriptions can make or break your sales to any product. Product descriptions need to be informative, motivating but also accurate (to avoid refunds later on). The main challenge is to get the attention of the visitor, therefore, good language skills pay off.

You don’t have to overrate your products, of course, because that would lose your credibility. But if your digital product is really functional and the best why not put your words accordingly and do tell everything about it. Give your descriptions some interesting twists to pull up interest but make it brief, clear, and complete. 

5. Attractive High-Resolution Images

On every page of your product pages, put on gorgeous images with clear, short descriptions in every digital product you have in bulletized form. And under it is the more descriptive identification of the product to help people know which of your products meet their actual

Images can actually do wonders in digital marketing. Even with digital products without the actual presence of a physical product, an attractive cover or theme representing the product can induce the utmost interest from your viewers. Imagine a song album. The songs people love are there, but if you have a boring cover, you will be boring your viewers as well and they will tend to leave.

 Whether you are setting up covers for your digital downloads or selling images or themes, you must always consider having images in your store in their most high-resolution features. High-Resolution picture convey an image of quality and have better chances of turning visitors into customers. 

6. Present your Bestsellers on the FrontPage

Your objective is to maximize sales. Bestsellers normally do this, as they have proven that those products do sell. Therefore, it’s a good idea to place your best-selling digital products on top of the page where everybody can see them easily and motivate readers to read on.

7. Establish Credibility with Ratings and Reviews

On the last part of each page, including the rating and review section. These features can build confidence with your audiences while letting them feel they can connect to you when they need to.

8. Categorize and Classify Your Products

Categorizing your products can essentially help your visitors to easily navigate your website while looking for your downloadable products. So make their navigation experience easy by classifying your products accordingly like based from their popularity with the most popular products right on the homepage. 

You can also classify your products into groups with dropdowns for each group to help your visitors arrive on more specified categories.  

9. Simplify Your Download Process

Create a download process that is very easy to use – no complications, just the necessary payout, and easy download procedures. Here, for digital products, it’s important that the purchased product can be downloaded immediately after purchase. This avoids questions and having to answer to emails from customers who didn’t get their purchased products for download.

10. Install an Intelligent Search Bar

Any visitor on your EDD store already has an idea on what he or she needs. However, if your website is quite intricate there is a great chance that the customer would not find the product he wanted and might leave. Not unless you have an intelligent search bar installed. This is where most of the EDD stores fail and we’ve seen a lot of websites still lack in this aspect.

The main function of your intelligent search bar is for the visitors to input their texts or keywords when searching for products they want right inside your website. This can be a very significant part of your homepage especially if the product they need cannot be found on your homepage or if it’s hidden among your array of products.

So, while you are adding more plugins, add-ons, themes or snippets on your EDD store, make sure your search bar becomes prominent on your homepage so that your visitors don’t need to dig deep within your website’s product categories. An intelligent search bar can suggest results while the user is typing for keywords. It should disregard typos and also show alternate product brands.

11. Add Feed Sharing Platforms

Nowadays, you have to have a tool to share to your customers what you got and Instagram is such a magical tool to let people discover your products from your feed and lead them directly to your website. So if you can install a shoppable Instagram feed into your EDD store, this could be a good opportunity for your customers to see a bit about your digital products with a bit of descriptions in them.

Also, did you know that a lot of people go to Youtube when they want to discover specific products and services including digital products like EDD products? Youtube is the world’s most popular video-sharing platform and you can upload your videos complete with your digital products’ information, DIY users’ instructions, and even links to your websites all for free.

12. Give Your Customer Unlimited Downloads To Their Purchase

We actually don’t know why some plugins get corrupted once they get installed and used for some time on some vendors’ stores or computers. This is why you must always have a ready to install reserve to get your store going.

Unfortunately, some EDD vendors limit their customers to 2 or 3 download for their particular products. But many expert sellers suggest that this is not necessary. As long as your plugins are programmed for single use and incapable to be shared, providing a limitless download option to your customers will not hurt your store but nevertheless can improve your customers’ satisfaction and you as the vendor.

13. Optimize Your Website’s Performance/Speed

This is the crucial part where many digital product vendors fail to check on. If your website’s performance or speed can take more than five seconds to load, then your store’s failure is deemed to happen. Note that for every visit every second count. So, when trying to retain the attention of your visitors to your website, don’t make them wait.

To check on your site’s speed loading time, you can check it here and scores or speed performance here.

14. Recover Abandoned Carts

Once your visitors hit your homepage, its important that they follow through to the checkout page. Once arrived on the checkout page, there will be some customers who abandon their shopping carts and

As these are warm-leads, already familiar with your products, it might just need a small push to convince them to buy the product. Therefore, one marketing technique which can be used is to systematically follow up on abandoned cart through a series of follow-up emails and by offering a time-limited discount code as motivation to complete the purchase. A useful plugin to use for your EDD store is the EDD Mailchimp Abandoned Cart plugin.

15. Include Real Time Download and Purchases Apps

Many vendors in the EDD world are now experimenting in adding real-time download and purchases apps on their homepage right at the bottom of their websites. These will show actual purchases that other customers do.

According to the report from the 2012 Psychology Journal, such a scene can provoke a sense of urgency among visitors which can encourage them to buy impulsively as they become under the sense of urgency.

16. Installing a Chat Box to Answer Customer’s Questions on the Spot

Install an easy chat access feature on your EDD website which will enable you to reach out and talk not only to your customers but also potential customers including just the curious browsers. Chat boxes are powerful tools in disseminating information to your audiences and enable you to know what they are looking for, can identify their issues and easily update them about your new products.

17. Gather Feedback and Testimonials

Consider complaints as part of your learning process in perfecting your digital products. And with testimonials, these actual users are the best real-time testers in the outside world so let them provide you the information you need to help you keep going while optimizing your conversion rate.

Testimonials, badges, and reviews from users are great gears in building up trust and credibility to other people especially the potential buyers. Particularly if your digital products are being used by high-profile influencers and being mentioned on popular websites or video sharing platform like Youtube, such opportunities can also persuade people to try your products.

Now, if you haven’t thought about doing the common basics in achieving sales conversion prior to experimenting with the suggestions mentioned above, you better go back to the real world. The following tips can help you realize what you should and should not do.  

18. Optimize Your Download Confirmation Emails

Even your customers have already purchased your product you can still have the opportunity to persuade them for another purchase once you have them signed up for your email subscriptions or newsletters.

Try emailing them from time to time to tell them about your store’s exclusive discounts, promotions, and new products. In this manner, you are also conditioning their minds to make them remember purchasing from your store once they again need digital products. 

19. Install Micro Conversion Features

Consider putting up micro conversion features which are smaller action features such as email subscriptions, wish list, account creation tabs, email sharing, and download tabs to know which of your visitors are getting interested or satisfied with your products. These are all “call to action” features that are essential in predicting and identifying your conversion rates.

Some further Tips – Continuous Improvement of your Conversion Rates

Conversion Rate Optimization requires also to deal with changing technologies and customer patterns. Therefore, its important to never stop and seek always new ways how to improve conversion rate even further. So here some of our best suggestions:

Be Observant on What’s Happening on eCommerce

Observe what’s going on in the eCommerce market and set your realistic goal. The movement on eCommerce, especially with digital products can be unpredictable but sometimes it follows certain patterns. This means that the demand for certain products also depends on the needs of the buyers and what’s going on with eCommerce. So try to create or sell products that are not very common but ultimately useful.

Always Try Fresh Ideas

Always come up with fresh ideas about products you should develop which you think could be in demand. Always meet with your team to brainstorm while optimizing your current products based on the reviews.

Don’t hesitate to test your creative ideas on your websites including your EDD store because this can be the best thing you can do in improving visits to your site. So don’t worry about presenting a unique profile to your EDD store since people continuously do look for something interesting but different on the web.

Test The Best Concepts

Don’t be afraid to test new ideas. As far as your resources can carry, go for it and get wild. Use all the software you can get: tracking software, analytics, etc. to make your EDD store properly equipped.

Analyze Test Results and Re-Test as Necessary

Don’t stop analyzing the conversion results of each of your product even it gets hot on the market to ensure 100 percent satisfactory results. Also, continuously check other sellers’ websites to see which of their digital products are popular and derive some ideas from there.

You may also check for better concepts like from other sellers’ homepages but make sure your website will carry its own character. 

Do Follow-Ups

Make sure to get your buyers’ email address to follow up feedback about your products and to let them know you have the responsibility to improve your products as well as your customer service capability.

Conclusion:

There are a lot of things one can do to optimize sales conversion for Easy Digital Downloads store and these tips, checklist, or whatever you want to call them, all we can say is that these are all powerful tools for you to be doing right now and some of these we gather from sellers using WooCommerce and Shopify.

EDD is now becoming a trend among those who want to dive into selling digital products. The number of its download plugins is growing each day because merchants are now seeing it as the best leeway in e-commercializing digital downloads.

The creators of EDD are also behind the creation of many WordPress plugins for use for affiliates, membership, payment and calendar plugins. It also has an excellent reputation in providing the best customer service while the developers continuously create excellent WordPress products and produce a lot of tutorials on WordPress development (Source: winningwp.com).

Nevertheless, we still need more feedback from the many eCommerce merchants who use EDD plugins because, with their testimonials, we can be guided properly and help us follow the right track in optimizing sales conversion for Easy Digital Downloads stores.