Browse abandonment happens when a shopper visits your ecommerce site, browses your products, and then leaves without adding anything to their cart. This leads to lost revenue and sales for your store.
With ActiveCampaign’s Browse Abandonment feature, you can reclaim this lost revenue by creating an automation that sends a campaign to contacts that entices them to return to your store to complete their purchase.
In this article, you will learn about browse abandonment, how it works, and how to create an automated follow-up flow to reclaim lost sales.
Take note
- Browse Abandonment is available with the WooCommerce integration
- To use this feature, you must have the latest version of the WooCommerce plugin (v2.8.7). To get the latest version of this plugin, navigate to your WordPress account, then go to Plugins > Installed plugins
- This feature does not track or support anonymous browsing
- This feature does not sync new contacts to your ActiveCampaign account. Instead, it syncs browse session data for existing contacts
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How the Browse Abandonment feature works
Browse Abandonment uses site tracking and session data to track and sync browse session details for existing contacts to your ActiveCampaign account. You can use this information to create browse abandonment automations and emails and segment contacts based on browse abandonment data. This feature does not sync new contacts to your account.
After or while configuring the WooCommerce integration, you can enable “Tracking & Browse Abandonment” in the WooCommerce plugin. After enabling this:
- The "Product Consideration Period" and "Browse Session Timeout" options are set to the recommended periods. This is located in your WooCommerce plugin settings and you can update them to best fit your business:
- We automatically install the ActiveCampaign site tracking code on your site. In the “Whitelist and Install Code” section of the Website > Site Tracking page in your ActiveCampaign account, you will see that the “Enable” toggle is “On” and your WooCommerce store is listed
Once configured, browse abandonment data syncs to contact records as a custom object, so long as the shoppers meet your browse abandonment criteria.
This feature has a "Browse Abandonment is created" automation trigger and a “Browse Abandonment” content block. This content block is available with the Email Designer (launched in 2022). You can use this block with automated campaigns. It is not possible to use this block with direct campaigns.
With this trigger and content block, you can create automations that pull shoppers into your workflow so you can send them an email that re-engages and entices them to return to your store and complete their purchases.
You must use the “Browse Abandonment” content block in automations that use the “Browse Abandonment is Created” trigger. You can only use one trigger per browse abandonment automation.
Configure browse abandonment settings
- Log into your WordPress account and navigate to the ActiveCampaign WooCommerce plugin.
- Under “Tracking & Browse Abandonment,” click either " Enabled " option.
- Click "Update Settings."
You can now sync and collect browse abandonment data from your logged-in shoppers.
Browse abandonment automation trigger
The Browse Abandonment feature comes with the “Browse Abandonment is created” automation trigger.
You can use this trigger to create automated workflows that send an email to shoppers, encouraging them to purchase.
Read the “Create a browse abandonment automation” help article for more information about these triggers and how to create a browse abandonment automation automation.
“Browse Abandonment” content block
The Browse Abandonment feature comes with a content block available with the Email Designer. This content block is supported in automated campaigns triggered by a browse abandonment event.
With this content block, you can display information about products that appeared in a shopper's browsing session but were later abandoned instead of placed in their cart. You can configure this block to show product images, names, prices, descriptions, and a button to return to your store.
For more information on this content block and how to create a browse abandonment automation, read the “Create a browse abandonment automation” help article.
Browse Abandonment information on contact records
When a contact abandons their browsing session, that information appears in the "Browse Abandonments" custom object on their contact record.
This custom object contains the following data:
- Abandonment date and time
- Session length
- Total amount
- Total products viewed
- Product names
- Session start date
- Maximum price
- Minimum price
- Minimum product view time
- Maximum product view tie
- Legacy connection ID
- Browse ID session
- Product SKUs
- Product primary IDs
- Product categories
Clicking the “Details” button opens a menu to the right that lists session details, including the shop name and each browsed item.
Use browse abandonment data to create segments
The Browse Abandonment feature comes with an additional segment condition: Browse Abandonment.
You can use this condition to create segments by email address, browse abandonment dates and prices, view times and session lengths, view product categories and names, and more.
This segment condition is available in all segment builders in ActiveCampaign.
Learn about Browse Abandonment segment conditions.
Definition of terms
Browse Session - A session representing a shopper who is (or was) in a store browsing products. A browse session has three states:
- Active - The user is still browsing product pages in the store)
- Abandoned - The user has been inactive in the store for a set period, usually 1 hour
- Added to cart - The user has added at least one item to a cart in the store
An active session will eventually move to either an “abandoned” or “added to cart” state.
A browse session can never move out of “Abandoned” and “added to cart.”
If a user browses more pages after a session is “Abandoned” or “Added to cart,” a new browse session is created.
Browse Product - Product details represent a single product a shopper views in a browse session. A browse product only exists within the context of a browse session. Details such as product names and images are populated based on the store’s product catalog, which must be synced to ActiveCampaign before using browse abandonment functionality.
Browse Abandonment - When a browse session moves to the “abandoned” state, a browse abandonment is created. Browse abandonments exist as an ActiveCampaign-managed custom object schema. Automations and segmentation can only be done from browse abandonments, not sessions.
Minimum Page View Time - A configurable setting that determines how long a shopper must stay on a page for ActiveCampaign not to ignore their page view. Any page views under the minimum page view time are ignored. Any views over this threshold are processed. (Default: 8 seconds.)
Session Timeout - A configurable setting that determines how long a period of idle activity ActiveCampaign will wait to mark a session as abandoned. For example, if this is set at 30 minutes, then 30 minutes after a user browses their last page in a session, that session will move to the “abandoned” state. (Default: 1 hour.)
FAQs
How are Browse Sessions Created?
ActiveCampaign checks site visits to see if they match URL patterns associated with the store connections (see below for how this URL pattern matching is performed). If a match is detected, an identifier is extracted from the URL and used to query the product catalog data for that store. The matching product is then added to a browse session.
If browse sessions are not created on your account, check the following:
- WooCommerce plugin - ensure that “Enabled” is selected under Tracking & Browse Abandonment
- In ActiveCampaign (Website > Site Tracking), ensure:
- Site Tracking is set to “Enabled”
- Your WooCommerce store is whitelisted
URL Pattern Matching
When ActiveCampaign receives a tracking event, we check the URL against all connections associated with the account. Each connection has a list of URL patterns (these patterns are not visible in the V3 connection API). This is a list of strings, each of which is a potential form the URLs for your product detail pages can take.
If we detect a URL match, we add an active browse session for that connection. If an active browse session already exists, we add the new product to it.
ActiveCampaign does not differentiate between http and https regarding URL matching.
How do Browse sessions move to “Added to Cart”?
When a shopper with an active session adds any item to their cart, the entire session moves to the “added to cart” state. That session is not marked as abandoned. If the user continues to view product pages after this, a new, active session is created.
What is the maximum number of browse products in a session?
We store a maximum of 25 browse products on a browse session. When a 26th product is added, the product with the lowest view time is removed.
How are page view times calculated?
Page view times are calculated based on the time passing between page views.
The product's view time before a session is abandoned will always be the same as your minimum page view time.
Resources
Review the articles below for more information about Browse Abandonment and the WooCommerce integration.