Since 2015, the percentage of retail sales being made online has more than doubled, from 12 percent to 26 percent. The trajectory is clear ?Çô sales are increasingly moving online.That said, the challenges facing online retailers are very different to bricks and mortar sellers, with daily abandoned carts accounting for billions in lost sales in the UK alone. But why do so many people abandon their digital shopping carts, and can anything be done once they have? The reasons behind abandonment are varied, but there are solutions that can help ?Çô and they are not hard or expensive to implement.With minimal investment, those that have abandoned their carts can be reengaged - turning interested shoppers into committed buyers. With an increasingly competitive retail ecosystem, omni-channel remarketing is a way to maximise a website?ÇÖs sale potential and should be a foundational component for ecommerce strategies. The financial impact of abandoned shopping cartsAccording to a report published in Retail Gazette online retailers lost ?ú38bn in 2024, with 24% of all items in shopping carts abandoned. In increasingly challenging times for the online retail space, missed opportunities such as these can be detrimental for businesses.Looking into some of DMAC Media?ÇÖs own clients' accounts, we learnt that many businesses lost between three and ten sales per day with an average order value of ?ú305. This could mean an annual loss of over ?ú700,000. When every penny counts, reducing the impact of abandoned carts has never been so important. Why do shoppers abandon their carts?In traditional in-store retail, if a shopper puts an item in their shopping cart, they are very likely going to buy it. In ecommerce however, it?ÇÖs far easier to abandon a shopping cart - you can simply close a tab and never return to make the purchase. The reasons behind a shopper abandoning their cart are myriad but users typically fall into one of two categories. The first are those that make an active decision to leave, often owing to something that happened during the checkout process. It?ÇÖs an inescapable truth that some users get cold feet before buying, but others are put off for more specific reasons. One of the leading causes of cart abandonment is the lack of ?Çÿcheckout as guest?ÇÖ options. This approach forces interested shoppers into having to spend time setting up an account, which can create a barrier to purchase.Other factors in an unoptimised checkout process include limited payment options and long delivery times, each of which can cause a user to abandon their cart. It will be very difficult to reengage these shoppers.Our second category, however, includes those users that haven?ÇÖt deliberately or fully decided to not buy, they may have simply been distracted and navigated away from the checkout or may need a little more time to make the decision to purchase. In either case, the danger here for businesses is that the user forgets about the purchase and never returns to complete the transaction. In previous years, these users were lost but they can now be reengaged. With the right approach, lost sales can simply be transformed into delayed sales.The solution? Omni channel remarketingOmni channel remarketing is a cost-effective, proven solution for our second category of shoppers, those who abandoned their carts. This approach includes the strategic use of online and offline marketing channels to reengage those shoppers.Automated email marketing is a typical first step, whereby potential customers are not only refamiliarised with a brand, but they can also be directly reminded of the purchase they were considering. If a website uses cookies and sessions to retain data, the user may find their previously abandoned order already in their cart, ready to be purchased. In support of this, short and medium-term use of search engine and social media advertising can be used to amplify the brand and reengage the user into the buying process. Our customers have reported that by implementing an omni channel remarketing strategy, lost checkouts have been reduced by an average of 16 percent, or approximately ?ú112,000 per year. To avoid losing those shoppers that fell into the first category, companies need to invest in a more streamlined checkout process that removes barriers where possible. Making a transaction as easy as possible with good UX on your website is a proven way to ensure a user doesn?ÇÖt abandon their cart in the first place. Using a winning combination of improved user experience while adopting the right omni channel remarketing strategy, lost shoppers can be won back. While no business will ever be able to convert every shopper into a paying customer, the combination of checkout evaluation and omni channel remarketing will help to reduce the impact of cart abandonment and ultimately increase revenue.