Learn to set up abandoned cart functionality in your WooCommerce store.
Overview
The WooCommerce connector allows you to send abandoned cart emails to your website's logged-in customers and guests.
The scenarios below outline the main processes that trigger enrolment for logged-in customers:
- Shopper logs into their account ➔ Adds items to their cart ➔ Abandons
- Shopper adds items to their cart ➔ Logs into their account ➔ Updates their cart ➔ Abandons
The scenarios below outline the main processes that trigger enrolment for guests:
- Adds items to their cart ➔ Signs up to newsletter ➔ Abandons
- Adds items to their cart ➔ Enters an email address during checkout ➔ Abandons
- Clicks through an email campaign ➔ Adds items to their cart ➔ Abandons
At this point, the cart details are stored as a record in that contact's CartInsight data collection. This CartInsight data includes items such as the URL of the cart, the products in the cart and the price of the cart.
The abandoned cart feature is quick to set up and intuitive, and you don't need to add any custom code to your store.
You need to build a program and map that program from the settings of the connector.
You have complete control over your program and can decide how many campaigns should be sent, the cadence of these campaigns, and the content within those campaigns. Cart content is easily inserted into the campaign by using the abandoned cart block. Enrolment can happen as soon as 30 minutes after the cart has been abandoned.
Before you start
Things you need to know:
- Check out The WooCommerce integration checklist to help track your progress.
- To use the latest WooCommerce Abandoned Cart functionality you must be on Dotdigital for WooCommerce version 1.3 or later.
To check your version, in Wordpress, go to Admin > Plugins > Installed Plugins.
Step 1: Create an abandoned cart email
An abandoned cart email contains the latest contents of a contact's cart in a pre-built layout, which is populated with CartInsight data. Abandoned cart emails are sent automatically through programs. Therefore, make sure you create an abandoned cart email as a triggered campaign.
Create an abandoned cart email by going to Automation > Triggered campaign content > Add new.
For more information, check out the article Create an abandoned email.
Step 2: Preview the content of an abandoned cart block
You can preview the text that will be displayed to a contact when the email is sent by using the personalised preview.
- Select Preview > Personalisation icon.
- Enter the email address of a contact that has a CartInsight data record. To find out which contacts have a CartInsight data record, create a segment that contains those contacts.
For more information, check out the article Create a segment.
If you need additional help with building an email campaign, read the email campaigns Getting Started section.
Step 3: Create an abandoned cart program
Contacts are enrolled into an abandoned cart program when they abandon items in their shopping cart while browsing your site. The enrolment into the program will be configured in your ecommerce integration, but in order to do this you need to create and activate an abandoned cart program
Create an abandoned cart program by going to Automation > My programs > New program.
For more information, check out the article Create an abandoned cart program.
New to Automation?
If you are new to program building we suggest you watch the Automation training videos or review our Automation section.
Step 4: Set up abandoned carts in WooCommerce
To set up abandoned carts in WooCommerce:
- In Wordpress, go to Dotdigital for WooCommerce > Settings.
- Under the heading Abandoned Carts, select the Enable abandoned carts check box.
- For Abandoned cart Program ID, enter the ID for your abandoned cart program in Dotdigital.
- For Allow abandoned cart delay (minutes), enter the amount of time in minutes that you want to pass before the customer enters your abandoned cart program.
- To let customers who aren't subscribed to your marketing communications enter your Abandoned cart program, select the Allow abandoned cart for non-subscribed contacts check box. You'll also need to make sure 'Enable guest carts'' is enabled on your Web Behavior Tracking profile.
- Select Save Changes.
Reminder
- The abandoned cart program must be in an active status for enrolment to begin.
- If you're currently using version 1.2 or earlier of our WooCommerce connector, you must upgrade to the latest version for improved functionality. After upgrading, in Dotdigital, go to Settings > WooCommerce, and deselect the abandoned cart trigger. You can then follow the steps in Set up abandoned carts in WooCommerce to set up abandoned carts.