Venue 11: Your tool to crush cart abandonment and drive more sales
All businesses come with their own unique set of challenges and advantages, identifying what they are and adjusting your business strategy based on that gives you the best foundation for success.
Anyone who has been in business for a while knows that there are no YouTube gurus or consultants who can do this part for you, it is data mixed with your own entrepreneurial intuition that will get you there.
However, there is one outlier challenge that slams the breaks on profit and the data shows that is a common headache across the board.
Ecommerce companies of all sizes and every variation share a common problem: Cart abandonment!
In 2022 the rates of cart abandonment rose to new dizzying heights of 69.99%
This means that for every 10 visitors who were interested enough to add products they like to the cart, 7 of them weren’t motivated enough to make that all-important step to the checkout.
With statistics like that, it’s clear your cart needs to be a cut above the rest to meet this challenge, with the features and optimizations now available on Venue 11 you can start turning the tide on those figures.
Article contents
This blog post will go into detail on the major features released with the Venue 11 update and how they help merchants combat cart abandonment. Including:
Free shipping bar
Recommended products
Gift wrapping
Customer journey
All other new features and changes added to Venue 11
Free shipping bar
One of the main reasons a customer will abandon their cart is unexpected costs, shipping being the main culprit.
A clever strategy here is to calculate how much profit margin on a single order is needed in order to provide free shipping and entice your customer to reach that threshold, with the reward being free shipping.
This means larger orders and with customers feeling the value boost of free shipping.
This is all sensible in theory, however, your customers want more than that, with the new free shipping bar available on Venue 11 you can now communicate this offer to your potential buyer in a satisfying and visually striking way.
Check out the video below to see the shipping bar in action:
The visual impact of the shipping bar will make your customers eager to increase their order amount and they will be delighted by the free shipping rewards, with an optional splash of confetti to celebrate of course ; )
This new feature is also functionality-packed, giving you more control over how best to use it for your business.
Here are the highlights:
Market-specific free shipping bars
Shopify gives you the freedom to sell worldwide and this feature gives you the power to adjust your free shipping offering based on where the customer is ordering from.
Customers from your locality will likely have a lower threshold for qualifying for free shipping than those in the far corners of the world, with Venue 11 you’ll be able to make sure all countries can participate in your free shipping offering with their own unique thresholds.
This is possible through a clever integration of the Venue 11 free shipping bar and Shopify’s markets feature, if you haven’t used Shopify markets feature yet, you can find out more about it here.
You can read about setting up your free shipping bar - with markets - in our help center article.
Extended to the product page
To best communicate your offer and to add a little extra style, the free shipping bar can be set up to appear on your product pages.
Customers will fall into shopping mode before they even get to the cart, save in the knowledge that they won’t run into any nasty shipping rates once they reach the order price threshold. The will also be encouraged to add more to the cart using the quantity selector before they even reach the cart.
Design options
Alongside the strong functionality, you will be equipped with the styling options you need to make the free shipping bar fit your brand and become a standout element of your site.
The bar itself comes with a convenient color selector that enables gradients to be used, this makes for an eye-popping look with a professional finish.
To solidify the professional look, you can also place an icon with the bar, either pick from the long list of pre-crafted icons that come built into the theme or for some specific branding, you also have the option to easily install any icon of your choice.
It’s worth mentioning that the shipping bar, is displayed on both the cart page and cart drawer to give you maximum flexibility.
Here are a few examples:
Recommended products
Cross-selling by recommending products plays a major role in any e-commerce strategy, it’s a tried and tested strategy for getting more products out the door, plus beefing up your average order will play a massive role in the success of your business.
Profits aside, it’s an opportunity to delight your customers.
Seeing a recommended product that is simply too good to resist enhances the customer’s experience and can even educate them on other products they were not aware you offered.
What better place to do this than in the cart, just when customers are in purchase mode?
Listed below is all the functionality that comes with this feature that will help you make those all-important cross-sales, plus an expensive problem that a lot of merchants have has also been cracked, check out the complimentary section below to find out more:
The feature places recommended products in a carousel contained within an elegant ‘mini card’.
The card is strategically placed in the same line of sight as the buy buttons on both the drawer and page-style carts, making it subtle yet unmissable.
To ensure your customers never need to stray too far away from the cart, products with multiple options will be equipped with a quick view button, meaning no distracting trips to product pages.
For products with only one option, a simple add-to-cart button will appear, allowing customers to move the product from card to cart in one click.
Check out the video below to see it in action.
Venue offers the standard Shopify ‘Dynamic’ algorithm to select what products appear but to give you full ‘Complimentary’ control, we’ve also built functionality that allows you to choose exactly what products appear and when.
Here is more on both options:
Dynamic products
Another clever partnership between theme and platform, the cart recommended products can be based of Shopify’s own algorithm that estimates which products are the most relevant to each individual customer.
This works wonders for large catalog stores, where there may be a large number of products that would work well as an add-on in the cart plus it gives you peace of mind that there is an algorithm working in the background to help best serve each customer rather than being randomized.
Complimentary products
In business, often automation can’t get the results you can, this is a common complaint among merchants when it comes to recommended products as they can’t select exactly what products should appear based on what products are already in the cart, without installing expensive apps of course.
For example, if you sell a particular sports team shirt, you might only want the matching shorts and socks recommended when that product is in the cart.
Or you might have a product on sale that you want recommended for every customer regardless of what products they have added to the cart.
The Venue 11 update allows you to skip the apps and do exactly that.
Again merging Shopify and theme to enable the most powerful features possible, the products that appear can be easily assigned within the free Search and Discovery app from Shopify.
Search & Discovery app - Complimentary products
If you’re new to this functionality, you can find out all you need to know here.
Gift wrapping
Make your customer’s experience extra special and convenient by implementing a gift-wrapping option for your orders.
A welcome boost to profits and relatively simple to implement, investing in scissors, tape, and paper can also unlock a new market and one that is primed for repeat purchases.
The gifting element of e-commerce is often overlooked, despite the fact that 82% of gift shoppers prefer to buy gifts online.
By offering them gift wrapping in the cart, you can clinch the deal as it provides them with a convenient service, convenience is key in decision-making, and this offering will go a long way in persuading customers to go with your store rather than a competitor.
Venue 11 makes it simple to implement the digital side of things, allowing you to set a price for gift wrapping and have it apply to the entire cart or on a product-by-product basis.
Individual wrapping or in bulk
We’ve added the ability to offer your customers the chance to have all of their products wrapped individually. Who is to say that everything they order is going to the same person?
Overall, offering individually wrapped items in your online store can enhance the customer experience, cater to a broader range of preferences, and potentially increase sales and customer loyalty.
Customer journey
Let’s tie all these cart abandonment-busting features together and take a look at how the customer journey looks with all of these features in play:
As you can see, these new features have come with a careful design that ensures they flow well across the entire site, this offers your website a truly professional look, rather than a mix-match of pricey apps that otherwise would be needed.
With this update in play, you’ll soon be watching your average order value go up and your cart abandonment levels go down!
You can install a free trial of Venue today and try out the new features yourself.
Release Notes
Venue 11 is full of new features, fixes and improvements, check out the full list below:
Added
Cart drawer and cart page fully redesigned and rebuilt
Free shipping bar added to cart and PDP
Gift wrapping CTA added to cart
Payment icons added to cart
Recommended products block added to cart
New button options and icons added to cart
SKUs added to cart
Cart now updated dynamically on cart page
Icons added to collapsible tabs on PDP
Product description in collapsible tab added to PDP
Recommended product section on PDP replaced with new component
Quick Shop element replaced with remote version with loading skeleton
Quick Shop drawer redesigned - mobile slide up replaced with side drawer
Grid image ratios now apply to all thumbnails - search, cart, quick shop, recommended products
All drawers tidied up with new widths added to desktop version
Main navigation link spacing slider added
Navigation arrows added back to PDP gallery
Social icons changed - added X, Threads, Twitch, WhatsApp
Password page - changed icons from share to merchant social links
Added the metafield and override features to the ‘View all’ mobile navigation buttons
Collection page - added filter drawer option and product count on desktop
Changed the ‘Account’ link when logged in - icon remains, dropdown removed
Added top/bottom padding sliders to all sections where possible
Inline display (non carousel) added to Announcement bar section
Improved layout of localization links in header on narrow screens
Navigation sub drawer headings moved to centre
Added SVG icon upload field to Testimonials section
Removed
Deprecated HTML tag removed
Fixes and other improvements
Localization drop down bug in navigation drawer fixed
RTE Tables overflowing/not wrapping bug fixed
Mega menu narrow mouse path improved
Mega menu H4 tags changed to P
SVG main logo bug fixed
Mega menu staggered load improved
Increased the scale on body and heading font
Social media icons improved