CartBoss Review: Feature-packed SMS Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugin
The checkout page is an integral part of any eCommerce website. This is where the visitors to a website turn into customers. People spend time deciding what products to buy, selecting the ones that satisfy their requirements, and adding them to their shopping cart. But not always are the customers ready to purchase the products. People save them on the cart for future purchases. There’s a good chance that they might forget about it. So reminding them could be the key to conversions. Also, many people often use the shopping cart as their wishlist and abandon the cart for many reasons. In this case, all they need is little motivation to make them purchase the products that they’ve added. This is where the SMS Abandoned Cart Recovery plugin from CartBoss comes in handy.
The SMS Abandoned Cart Recovery plugin from CartBoss is a text messaging solution plugin for WooCommerce that allows your online store to recover abandoned carts, reduce dead stock and improve customer lifetime value in less than 5 minutes with text messages.
Overview:
If you’re running an eCommerce website, there’s a high chance that you might be using WooCommerce or Shopify. CartBoss is compatible with both WooCommerce and Shopify. While these eCommerce platforms allow you to send emails to your customers who abandon their cart, it is known that emails have a low open rate and an even worse click-through rate. In contrast, CartBoss connects more personally to the customers by going one step further and sending SMS to their mobiles. Open rates of text messages are over 99%, and click-through rates are as high as 55%. So there is an enormous better chance of converting than with emails.
Besides recovering abandoned carts, you can also use CartBoss to send post-purchase text messages, including special offers and discounts to inform your customers. It’s also packed with features like pre-prepared and pre-tested messages that are also translated into languages they offer, automatic language detection of the recipient, a pre-filled checkout page, etc. Let’s take a closer look at these features in the latter part of this review.
Important Links:
Installation:
Before we move on to the installation process, make sure that you have:
- WordPress updated to version 5.0 or above,
- WooCommerce 4.0 or above,
- PHP version on the server 7.0 or higher.
Installing the plugin:
1. Open your WordPress dashboard and go to Plugins > Add New.
2. Search for “CartBoss” in the search bar.
3. Next, click on the ‘Install Now’ button and activate the plugin after installation.
Insert the API KEY:
First, you need to have the API KEY, which you find in your CartBoss dashboard (under ‘Websites,’ select the correct one, and click ‘Install’).
To access the CartBoss dashboard, you need to register at http://cartboss.io/.
To enter the API KEY into the CartBoss plugin, click on the link in the notification or click on the ‘CartBoss’ option in the left side menu.
Next, enter the API KEY in the ‘Connect plugin’ field.
Finally, click on the ‘Save Changes’ button at the bottom of the screen.
If the key is correct, you should see a confirmation that:
- The API key is valid
- Sending events is OK
- Website is active
Key features of CartBoss:
1. ROI and CTR:
One of the key benefits of using CartBoss is the result that it offers to eCommerce companies. After using it, the users have gained up to a whopping 5000%+ ROI and 37% CTR, as per CartBoss. So, it’s pretty evident from the CTR that it draws the customers’ attention and encourages them to make that critical purchase decision. And with that amount of ROI, you’re clearly getting your money’s worth.
Using CartBoss’ simple dashboard interface, you can see the real-time statistics of the messages and your website. The main page of the dashboard shows your text messages’ ROI, overall CTR, and much other information.
At the bottom, you can also see the revenue generated by CartBoss for each site, their ROI, and the average CTR.
2. Automatic abandoned cart recovery via text messages:
As previously mentioned in this review, the main feature of CartBoss is automatic abandoned cart recovery via text messages. After connecting your eCommerce site with your CartBoss account, you only need to choose what abandoned cart text messages you want to send and what kind of time delay. You can choose from the library of 20+ pre-tested and optimized text messages to send to your customers, or you can write your own.
How it works:
The software detects inputs from the visitors’ checkout fields and saves them. The whole process begins only if the users enter the phone number. On top of that, the phone number will be checked if it’s valid or not before sending the message. If not, it won’t send any message so that you don’t lose money unnecessarily.
Once the visitor enters the phone number and does not complete their order within a few minutes, they are considered an abandoned cart/visitor.
This visitor’s phone number is then sent to the funnel you’ve set, and they receive one or multiple messages reminding them to complete their order. If they complete the order after receiving the messages, they won’t be receiving any further messages.
3. Extremely simple website integration
Integrating CartBoss text messaging service to your eCommerce website is a piece of cake. CartBoss offers plugins for your WordPress websites and Shopify that you can easily install within a few minutes. After installing, connect your website with CartBoss by pasting in the API key provided in the dashboard. That is it, your website is now connected with CartBoss, and you can manage the messages from the dashboard.
4. Post-Purchase text messages:
Post-purchase messages are one of the best ways to make the customers upgrade from the existing product. This is one of the most important upselling methods in eCommerce. Once a customer purchases a product from your website, he would’ve gained some amount of trust. This is the best time to offer additional products, and there is no better way to contact them directly than phone messages.
CartBoss offers you a few pre-prepared and translated post-purchase messages. These messages include fixed discounts or free shipping and links that direct to the website’s homepage. You can also customize these messages by including links to specific pages containing offers and adding custom coupon codes.
5. Automatic language detection:
When CartBoss needs to send a message to a recipient, it automatically detects the language it needs to be sent by checking the recipient’s country. Then based on the language used in that country, it sends them pre-prepared translated messages. The users can also enter translated custom text messages using CartBoss.
6. Auto-fill checkout fields:
To save time and speed up the purchasing process, CartBoss saves all the visitor’s information in the checkout fields so that when they come back, all the information is automatically filled in the checkout fields. Even if they alter the information, it gets updated so that they have the correct data saved for future visits to the website.
7. Multilingual:
CartBoss not only offers prepared messages, but they’re also translated by translators and double-checked by native speakers. So, you don’t have to spend your time and money on localizing the text for different message recipients.
Click on the edit button where you select the message to send, and you’ll find all the translations for that message available. You can also send it to yourself in a chosen language to get a better understanding.
8. Automatic special offer embedding in the links
We never know why a visitor would abandon his cart. There could be various reasons why a visitor would abandon the cart. It might be because of the unexpected shipping cost, long delivery time, the overall price, unavailability of coupon codes, etc. In most cases, a standard reminder message would do the job. But when price becomes the problem, offering them a discount is an ideal solution. Thankfully, CartBoss allows you to do that without any additional effort.
Whether it’s WooCommerce or Shopify that you’re using, CartBoss automatically generates coupon codes, embedded into links for optimal customer experience, and deletes them after a specific period. All you have to do is choose the message you want to send to the customers. CartBoss offers several different special offers that you can include in the messages out of the box:
- Fixed or percentage discount
- Free delivery
- Custom coupon codes (need to be first generated on the site)
9. Different types of special offers:
CartBoss provides you with different offers/discounts options to send to your customers with post-purchase messages. You can offer anything you wish through messages, just like with emails.
The offers that CartBoss includes in these messages are percentage discounts, fixed amount discounts, and free shipping. You also have the option to include custom coupon codes that need to be generated on the website.
10. GDPR compliant:
CartBoss supports all GDPR regulations. Every text message sent to the recipient includes an option to unsubscribe from receiving them. On top of that, CartBoss also allows you to display an additional checkbox on the checkout form, using which the users can opt into receiving them.
Pricing:
While CartBoss is absolutely free to use on any platform, you only need to pay for the SMS messages that your business needs. No credit card is required until you start sending SMS messages.
In addition, CartBoss also temporarily offers 50€ free SMS sending credits for recovering abandoned carts with CartBoss’ solution. Every newly registered user gets 50€, and they can use them in any way they would like – there are no limitations.
Final thoughts:
Text messages are gaining popularity and are being widely used in eCommerce to optimize marketing and grow brand awareness. While there aren’t many great options, CartBoss comes in and offers more than what you’d expect from an SMS message plugin.
It provides the perfect solution for cart abandonment with excellent ROI and CTR, has pre-prepared messages to send post-purchase offers with automatic language detection, and automatically saves the recipient’s checkout field data for faster future checkouts. It also has excellent compatibility with WooCommerce, Shopify, and any other site through custom SDK/API integration.
If you want to connect with your customers directly and personally and want them to make that critical purchase decision to increase your revenue, there is no good reason you shouldn’t try CartBoss. It has pretty much every feature you’d expect, and with excellent support and documentation, it gets an easy recommendation.
Verdict:
| Features | 5/5 |
| Ease of use | 4.5/5 |
| Support | 5/5 |
| Documentation | 4/5 |
| Value for money | 5/5 |
| Overall | 4.7/5 |
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