Customer Retention Strategy: 10 Appealing Exit Popups with Discount Hooks

Popups are a controversial topic that give some people the chills, while others the thrills. In this blog post, we will view exit popups as a customer retention method. They can help you keep incoming traffic in your store while generating more leads.

Speaking of traffic, a lot of E-Commerce stores struggle with getting newcomers to visit their site. To increase your traffic, you need to invest in SEO and marketing.

And even if your traffic metrics seem fine, we see insufficient conversion rates for E-Commerce sites. Currently, the average conversion rates range from 2.32% (according to SmartInsights) to 8% (according to RipenEcommerce).

Here is a typical behavior or a user browsing through a website. Let’s call this visitor Sarah and she is looking for a pair of new shoes.

After a minute, nothing grabs her attention.

She decides to leave and the cursor heads for the X button.

But wait!

Suddenly, a wild popup appears!

(Source: topshop.com)
 

The bright color and big SALE sign immediately seize her attention. Enough to make Sarah click on the Shop Sale button and make use of hat 50% discount.

She couldn’t resist the great offer and orders a pair of shoes.

This is a fine example of an exit popup. Exit popups are usually, well popups in the form of a banner or an image. They appear when a user attempts to exit the website. The popup activates when the cursor leaves the web border at the top of the browser.

The magic of exit popups is that you have waited until the last possible moment for a customer to make a purchase. The only thing left to do when someone is leaving is offer them a discount or something for free. After all, it’s better to make a sale at a discounted price than not selling anything. This is another way for remarketing your store to customers before they leave.

Retention is Cheaper and More Profitable than Acquisition (Click to Tweet)

Getting new customers to your site is key, but it costs a lot. Methods that keep those visitors longer can convert them at a lesser cost.

70% of the companies that focus on customer retention say it’s less expensive than acquisition strategies. These strategies require long-term commitments for SEO, web design and marketing. While they are good for attracting customers, they lack the same effect for building lasting relationships. And this is the point where customer retention tactics excel.

The ultimate goal of any E-Commerce store is to attract users and convert them into customers. After customers get to know your business, the shopping process simplifies and they may become brand loyal. All of this increases the probability of selling to existing customers by up to 50 and 70%.

The ROI numbers must be tracked, whatever your investment is. The return you can get from a solid retention strategy can be much bigger. Especially when compared to the billions spent on content and advertising worldwide.

The Essence of a Retention Strategy

Customer retention means not letting your existing customers go away or turn to a competitor. Turning random visitors into long term customers that prefer your store over others. Building relationships with customers and making them last.

These are the basic goals of a customer retention strategy. They are achieved using tactics, such as excelling at customer service, offering benefits to existing customers, and many others.

“Customer satisfaction is everything”

Bill Price, Amazon VP of Global Customer Service

The retention tactics can be a part of the user experience in your website or the way you treat customers. Here are just a few basic examples of tactics that can be used to strengthen your customer retention strategy:

  • Outstanding support and customer service - Always respond as fast as possible to any issues your customers might be having with your product, service or website.

  • Minimizing customer effort - Simplify the shopping and checkout process, give clear information on all key details such as shipping, payment and returns.

  • Being easy to reach - If users want to contact you, their experience is already flawed, so be ready to shine with your response time and channels of communication.

In their report for relationship marketing, Econsultancy concluded almost half of their respondents achieve better ROI from retention rather than acquisition strategies.

Popups Are Not to Blame if Customers are Leaving (Click to Tweet)

It’s not the popup’s fault if your website is chasing away potential buyers. Especially the popups that appear before they click “Exit.”

If the first thought on your mind was “I hate popups, I’m not putting them on my store”, you’re definitely not alone. Ad popups are the Number 1 reason for users to block a website.

However, popups are also the reason for doubling subscription rates.

An E-Commerce site had a sales increase of 50% that was achieved with a popup.

But how is that possible? Doesn’t everyone ignore and close popups wherever they appear?

To some degree, yes. But they don’t chase away customers and have nothing to do with your bounce rate. There are other factors that make users leave websites.

What Actually Causes People to Leave?

There are many reasons for users to leave websites. From slow page-loading time and too much irrelevant ads, to bad design and difficult navigation, getting users to hang around is a challenge for websites that lack quality.

When we are shopping online, three of the top four reasons for leaving E-Commerce websites are cost-related:

  • Seeing unexpected costs at checkout

  • Found a better price at another store

  • Price is too expensive

Other reasons include:

  • An unclear returns policy

  • Uncertainty when shopping from a new site

  • Inability to inspect the product in their own hands

Can Exit Popups Solve the Problem?

Exit popups allow you to change the negative cost-related statistics and give your users a reason to stay. Without having to actually lower your prices or apply a discount to all your products.

Popup spam and overwhelming ads are definitely a bad way to go at this.

When the popup is relevant and presented at just the right moment, its value is raised and so is the effect. A popup becomes relevant when it's brief, visual and clear.

Be Brief

The size of information is not too much (remember, the customer is on his way out, which means you have less than a second or two attention time to work with).

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Be Visual

There is a visual element or a large sign that quickly conveys the message you want to show customers.

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Be Clear

You have included a clear call-to-action button showing that it can instantly solve the cause of the user leaving.

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Customer Retention Popup Examples

We will take a look at several examples of properly designed exit popups. They use different hooks to prevent users from leaving and converting them into paying customers. You will learn what makes these popups work and how you can implement them into your E-Commerce site.

GrubHub.com (Click to Tweet)

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The main sign “Get $7 Off” is big enough to notice instantly. The bowl of soup at the left is the visual element helping visitors understand the food-related proposition. The call-to-action at the bottom highlights the discount users will get upon clicking. The “Thanks, but no thanks” button below lets you leave if you are not interested in the offer after all.

Bazaar.com (Click to Tweet)

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The message of the popup states “10 Bags Every Woman Should Own.” This is the element that sparks curiosity and desire. There are two bags presented visually on the left and right, possibly part of the must-own collection. The CTA saying “Access the 10 Must Have Bags” suggests visitors are going to access something special when they enter their email in the field.

FiveFourClub.com (Click to Tweet)

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The immediate attention-grabber here is the full image background with an elegantly dressed person. The value proposition lies within the question “Want to dress better for even less?” The actual discount is below the headline, followed up with an invitation to leave an email and learn more about the offer.

HungryHouse.co.uk (Click to Tweet)

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Who can resist an image of a pizza, right? The special offer in the popup starts with a question. Questions are an attention-grabbing conversation invitation. The large, green “Feed Me” CTA cleverly stands out with both its color and humorous message.

Tobi.com (Click to Tweet)

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The large image covering half of the popup and the high discount percentage are the two elements that aim to stop users from leaving. “50% off your first order” is both hard to miss and hard to resist for any digital shopper. And all you have to do is enter your email.

TopMan.com (Click to Tweet)

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While there is no immediate discount in this popup, it contains a helpful suggestion for users to sign in and save their shopping bag for later. A lot of customers put products in their shopping carts for reference, or make their picks for the moment they are ready to buy. An interesting offer is the “Free delivery and returns” policy that TopMan outline. Another smart element designed to address the most common cart abandonment causes.

DiamondCandles.com (Click to Tweet)

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A classic discount exit popup. The message puts emphasis on 10% OFF ... “We’re giving you 10% off your order." It’s a personal message, instead of generic text meant for the masses. There are two visual elements picturing some of the products and a concise CTA for users to get “their” 10% off.

QuickSprout.com (Click to Tweet)

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While not an E-Commerce popup, this is a good example of how you can turn a leaving user into a customer. The big “WAIT!” text is hard to miss, but the most interesting part is the confident message. 83% off the price is too good to miss.

USADiscountWarehouse.com (Click to Tweet)

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This is a good example of an exit popup with a limited time offer. 15% off plus free shipping is not a bad proposition, given the fact that all you need to do is enter a code. The sense of urgency created by “Use this code within 15 min” makes the popup even more powerful by setting a deadline, which raises the conversion probability.

How to Implement Exit Popups in OpenCart

There is a way to start designing exit popups with discount hooks in your OpenCart store. The extension you can use is called DiscountOnLeave.

This extension allows you to create and test multiple popups. The control panel lets you define details such as:

  • The exact position of the popup

  • The pages on which the popup will show

  • How often the popup should appear

You can add custom HTML to create appealing popups and add links that will direct customers to different pages in your store.


 

The Most Important Takeaway

As we always say - start testing and try out different versions. Don’t stop experimenting and optimizing your E-Commerce website. The examples in the article showed you that exit popups can be diverse in many ways, and DiscountsOnLeave is the way to start implementing them successfully in your OpenCart store.

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