If you were ever frustrated with your bounce rates and seeing prospects slip away just before making a purchase, this article is for you.
Keeping website visitors engaged and preventing them from leaving prematurely has become a paramount challenge for online businesses.
Enter “exit-intent technology” – a revolutionary tool designed to detect when users are about to leave a webpage and respond with targeted content or offers to retain their attention.
In this post, we will delve deep into the mechanics of exit intent technology, its benefits, and how businesses can effectively leverage it to reduce bounce rates and increase conversions.
Definition
Exit-intent technology refers to intelligent behavioral software designed to monitor visitors’ mouse movements on a website.
Its primary objective is to assist marketers in identifying when a visitor is about to leave the site without completing a purchase (or completing any other action – such as subscribing to a newsletter).
With this intel, marketers can proactively re-engage visitors, enticing them to stay longer on the site and, ideally, make a purchase.
In essence, exit-intent technology is a valuable tool for optimizing online interactions and improving conversion rates.
Why Do Marketers Use Exit Intent Technology?
Studies show that exit intent technology has significantly helped marketers improve their conversion rates by up to 46%.
With Exit Intent Technology, marketers have the ability to engage potential customers effectively.
This technology ensures that visitors stay engaged and interested by displaying intriguing information, showcasing the latest and most enticing offers, and highlighting top-quality products.
Marketers can strategically present discounts, promotions, or exclusive deals precisely when visitors are about to leave the site, enticing them to explore further and make a purchase decision.
This personalized approach captures potential buyers’ attention and enhances their overall shopping experience, leading to higher satisfaction and increased likelihood of conversions.
How Does Exit Intent Technology Work?
Exit Intent Technology operates by tracking users’ behavior on a website, specifically monitoring their mouse movements and gestures.
The technology triggers a targeted response when a visitor exhibits signs of leaving the site, such as moving the cursor toward the browser’s close button or address bar.
For example, an exit popup can be triggered by the mouse leaving the active browser window, while others will be triggered when the user clicks on the close button.
This trigger could result in the form of a popup message, a special offer, or a discount coupon strategically displayed on the screen.
The goal is to intercept the user’s intention to leave by giving them a compelling reason to stay.
This proactive approach not only helps retain potential customers but also enhances user experience and boosts conversion rates, making it a valuable tool for online businesses aiming to maximize their impact and sales.
Implementation Ideas and Examples of Successful Exit-intent Interactions
Now that we understand the concept and how it works, let’s discuss ways to make your exit-intent pop-ups really work wonders for your conversions.
Here are some ideas you need to try.
1. Build Email Lists
The most accessible use of exit-intent interactions is to build email lists.
XeroShoes is a good example of an eCommerce business using exit-intent in order to generate leads. The company delivers value: “Learn about the benefits of going barefoot” and “Feel the freedom.”
2. Find out why your visitors are not buying
Discovering the pains of your customers can help you direct your actions and ‘give the right pills’ to make your visitors feel better and take action – it’s simple like that!
The use of exit-intent surveys and logic branching can guide your actions in real-time based on your visitors’ responses.
Omniconvert developed such an exit-intent interaction for the fashion eCommerce site – Stella Carakasi.
In this manner, the fashion eCommerce website could learn not only the reasons why visitors were abandoning the site without buying but also they could treat the objections in real-time.
3. Address Objections
For example, if the visitors were price sensitive, an exit-intent interaction would activate and provide them with a product selection on sale based on their previous search, history, or style preferences.
4. Offer Incentives
You can replicate the user experience from physical stores via eComm by offering incentives or by communicating on a personal level, asking direct questions, such as: “What size do you wear?”, “ Do you think that this is too expensive?”.
For example, Audible offers a $4.95 discount on your favorite audiobook as soon as you want to exit their website.
This incentive can trigger positive emotions, as it provides persuasive content, delivering a tangible reward.
Nevertheless, it is highly important to run A/B testing experiments on different content overlayers in order to maximize exit-intent potential.
5. Create Scarcity
In order to increase the conversion rate, you can use the psychological phenomenon called the Fear of Missing Out aka FoMO.
This phenomenon outlines that when people think they might miss out on something, they will act immediately.
Secondly, scarcity can act as a social proof indicator. Moreover, when limited range of products, the visitors’ product quality perception can be affected positively.
For example, in an experiment performed in 1975, people were asked to rate cookies placed in two different jars.
The first one contained 10 cookies, whereas the second one had only 2 cookies. The cookies from the two-cookie jar received higher ratings, even though there were the same cookies as in the first jar.
So, how can you implement scarcity on your eCommerce site?
Using Omniconvert, you can implement interactive on-exit overlayers aimed to provide not only offers but also trigger visitors’ fear of missing out, using parameters such as
- Product Stock
- Number of people viewing a particular product
- Number of people buying in real-time
6. Real-time web personalization
Use the existent variables around a cookie/IP in order to deliver products, relevant for your visitors.
One such personalization feature is weather conditions.
A good example of an eCommerce website making use of Omniconvert’s weather segmentation engine is Covera for their product category on trees.
The experiment included triggering on-exit a selection of trees ready to be planted based on the outside temperature of the visitor’s location in real-time.
The exit-intent overlayer brought 60.4% more conversions for Covera’s product category.
7. Recommend products
Place exit-intent overlays based on the style, viewed products, or history in order to provide visitors with products relevant to them.
This is another cool way of using exit-intent throughout the conversion optimization process.
8. Reduce Choices
Reducing choices is an important principle for eCommerce Websites.
Based on an experiment in a supermarket in the UK on 6 gem flavors versus 24 gem flavors, the results showed that the conversion rate was 10 times bigger for the limited set of product choices, as 30% more consumers converted when exposed to limited choices.
A good example of an eCommerce website that reduced the choices in the footwear category using Omniconvert tools is Bfashion.
By A/B testing several overlayers on exit-intent, Bfashion succeeded in increasing their cart rate by 18.60% and conversion rate by 14.2%, and the statistical significance for all the experiments was 100%.
Bfashion made use of filters based on visitors’ foot size in order to deliver suitable products with a click away.
Exit-Intent Website Overlay Examples & Case Studies
With a better understanding of the exit-intent technology and best practices for your website, it’s time we looked at our favorite CRO case studies. Feel free to steal these ideas for your eComm business.
1 – Bonia used exit intent overlays with surveys that led to a 28% increase in conversions in a product category
Bonia is one of the top luxury fashion retailers in Asia, with over 700 offline shops and 70 boutiques.
At the time of the experiment, the offline stores of Bonia were very famous in Asia, but online sales were challenging – as there was no real person present to address the cognitive biases of a customer.
To that end, on-exit surveys were used to conduct qualitative research and understand the reasons why visitors weren’t buying.
First, we asked them if they found what they were looking for on Bonia.com:
If the answer was Yes, we asked them why they did not purchase anything/ did not finish the order.
After 2 months of running on the website and a sample of 1000 answers, our survey concluded that:
- 85% of the respondents did not find what they were looking for, and
- only 15% of them did find what they wanted, but something stopped them from buying.
The main objection was the budget.
The other part of the visitors were looking especially for Watches, Bags, and Wallets (the heroes of the website).
Based on these insights, we built a hypothesis meant to validate the findings: visitors need to see these main categories (watches, bags, wallets) right away when they land on the website.
We have added the Watches category in the navigation bar, split between Men’s watches and Women’s watches, and also emphasized the Bags and Wallets category together with maximizing the font size.
The result was a 28% increase in conversions in this product category.
2 – How MeliMelo got a 67% increase in the add-to-cart rate
MeliMelo is one of the leading brands of fashion and jewelry in Romania.
However, it was noted that customers were visiting the physical retail stores to purchase their products more than they would online. MeliMelo wanted to replicate this customer behavior and increase their purchasing in their online store.
After a thorough audit and analysis, Omniconvert recommended applying a treatment to a specific area. The focus was targeted toward the lower end of their sales funnel, where a lot of visitors were leaving.
To address the challenge, we designed experiments aimed at boosting trust in the MeliMelo website. They targeted visitors on product pages, emphasizing the benefits of online purchasing.
After Qualitative research was conducted on the product page, it was noted that visitors:
- Knew what they wanted to buy;
- Wanted details about the product;
- Were concerned about the return policy;
- Were price sensitive on delivery policy and delivery time.
Considering the objections and buyer concerns, a website overlay was created to address the return policy, the free delivery within specific locations, and the two-day delivery time across the country.
Over a period of 15 days, the desktop visitors from major cities were shown this experiment. Traffic was split evenly (50/50) between control and variation.
With this experiment, MeliMelo received:
- An increase of 67.61% in shopping cart entries
- A significantly lowered bounce rate
- A 97% statistical relevance
3 – Website overlay with filter personalization increased revenue by 66.75%
As a leading online retailer selling genuine and original manufactured, Watchshop has grown its services and now stocks thousands of different types of watches.
In the audit phase, an interesting opportunity was discovered.
There was a potentially valuable and underperforming segment with engaged users who were not using the price filter.
With this information, it was decided to influence and help visitors start using the price filters more often. If the engaged visitors did not use the price filters, a reminder for them to do so was applied.
This would help them make a decision based on their personal needs and preferences. Visitors using price filters will generally have a higher conversion rate by comparison.
Omniconvert applied a treatment based on the hypothesis that if we prompt an exit pop-up overlay, showing available price ranges to visitors, we will help them close the sale faster. This was also isolated to visitors who haven’t used the price filters before.
For this, we selected visitors who:
- had viewed 2 pages or more containing certain keywords (banner-related),
- had not used price filters,
- and had not been involved with any previous experiments before.
The experiment also targeted brands synonymous with high quality, such as Q&Q, Casio, Timex, Fossil, and Orient.
When a visitor displayed an exit behavior intention on these specific brands, an overlay with a price filter would be triggered. A different pop-up, as well as changes in message copy, were custom-designed to match each brand.
The sales were lower on the control version when compared to the variation page, even if the experiment was segmented to all visitors with traffic evenly split (50/50).
The results from this experiment:
- An increase of 6% in the conversion rate
- Uplift of 1.68% in revenue per visitor
- Validation with 99.21% in statistical relevance
4 – On-exit overlay increased Samsung’s revenue by 26% in a two-week timeframe
Founded in 1938 as a trading company, Samsung now generates more than $300 billion USD annually from product sales and services and is one of the world leaders in the smartphone sector.
They were introducing to the smartphone market a brand new model, the Samsung Galaxy S6.
A goal was set to convince as many visitors as possible to buy the new Samsung Galaxy S6 within a two-week pre-launch time frame.
For a limited time, the Galaxy S6 was available online for pre-order with all partners and distributors. To stimulate people to pre-order online, Samsung included a free charger as an additional incentive.
The Omniconvert team created a campaign focused only on a specific target: customers who were specifically interested in smartphones.
When an exit behavior was noticed, a web overlay was triggered and led them to an appropriate landing page.
Several variations were tested with the message in copy.
The most successful one was the following design:
The personalization experiment is displayed when the visitor shows an exit behavior. This behavior commonly moves the mouse towards the URL address bar or the tab/ browser close button.
In real-time, visitors who wanted to leave the page without reading about the current offer for the Galaxy S6 were the targeted audience.
In addition, visitors who presented an interest in the smartphone category and hadn’t seen the current offer on the website were also included.
This campaign reached a small percentage of shop visitors. The precisely matched customer segmentation found the following results:
- An additional 26% increase in revenue
- 2% of those who saw the creative made a purchase within 2 weeks
- The creative had a 7.6% click-through rate (CTR)
- 60% of visitors further stayed on the website instead of leaving
5 – Testing an exit intent overlay increased the newsletter sign-up rate by 279% for Wall-Street
A publication part of Internetcorp, Wall-Street.ro is one of the most read online newspapers for business.
The average visitor stays on a website for approximately three minutes per visit. It is important that they are engaged and brought back in this time frame regardless of subsequent visits.
One of the most successful channels to increase returning visitors is through email.
With existing subscribers, Wall-Street.ro was able to initiate personalized communications by email.
This experiment targeted visitors who were likely and eager to engage in a personal conversation with their digital news provider and may currently not be subscribed.
In the original web page (control), there is an obscure subscription panel that is lost in the page content.
Visitors could come and go without being asked anything.
The newsletter subscription form was placed on the left sidebar and was not a very prominent feature (measuring on average about 320x210px).
Keep in mind that when a visitor exits, they are lost 100%, and so the control is not required in exit variation testing.
We created two customer exit intent overlays, both with a persuasive message copy and an image or graphic that was related.
They were applied and measured based on the lead collection, and each variation was split and tested evenly (50/50) for visitor traffic.
The aim of designing two variations simultaneously was to test which approach persuades better. The traffic was made available to all visitors and was tested over a two-week period.
The variations tested brought:
- An increase of 279% in the sign-up rate for variation 1
- Variation 1 successfully overtook Variation 2
- 99% statistical relevance achieved on both variations
- Over 50% reduction in bounce rate (visitor exiting)
As you can see, looking at all case studies, we can easily say that on-exit intent overlays create a great bridge in your conversion funnel and will help you connect with visitors faster and better.
If you’re still not convinced or simply want to see more ideas, check out our full case study portfolio, and discover even more successful examples from clients such as OLX, Telekom, ING Bank, the University of London, or Tripsta.
Wrapping up
Exit-intent technology not only empowers you to increase your conversion rates but also helps you build a strong community around your brand.
You can leverage them in your research stage to understand your customers inside out, address their concerns in real-time, and make their shopping experience personalized and memorable.
Exit-intent popups enable you to create a more meaningful and convenient experience, suggesting just the right products and gently guiding customers toward a purchase.
Ready to use them on your own eComm platform?
Then check out Omniconvert Explore: the first democratic CRO platform that helps you convert visitors to customers through Surveys, A/B Testing, Personalization, and Segmentation.
If you want to see how exit-intent interaction can be implemented in your eCommerce website – book a call, and let’s talk!
