15 Ways a Wishlist Can Boost Your E-commerce Strategy

Every wishlist save tells you what a shopper wants. Turn those saves into reminders, alerts, and repeat sales.

Many shoppers are not ready to buy on their first visit. Some are browsing, some are comparing, and some are waiting for the right moment. A wishlist lets shoppers save what they like, so you know which products they want and can follow up when they are ready to buy. Here are 15 ways to put those saves to work.

Lower your cart abandonment rate by capturing shoppers who are not ready to buy

1. Add a wishlist button so browsers can save products

Not every visit ends in a purchase, so give shoppers a way to keep what they like. Baymard found that 42% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart because they were just browsing or not ready to buy. Add a save button to your product pages. Each save tells you which product a shopper wants.

2. Add save for later to the cart

When a shopper removes an item from the cart, a Save for Later prompt can offer to keep it instead. That gives you a second chance at the sale and a way to lower your cart abandonment rate. GAÂLA has seen it work: Save for Later recovered thousands of dollars from items shoppers removed from the cart and bought later through reminders.

3. Send wishlist reminders before the cart

A cart flow starts once a shopper adds to cart, while a wishlist flow can start at the first save, so your reminders reach shoppers earlier. GAÂLA found that its wishlist flows earn 50% higher revenue per recipient than its abandoned cart flows. Wishlist Plus also drives 11% of its online revenue and 13% of its orders.

Use wishlist alerts to bring shoppers back at the right moment

Trigger price drop alerts

Tell shoppers when something they saved costs less. Petit Bateau Japan sent price drop emails through Swym, and its price drop campaign earned 148% higher revenue per send than its wishlist reminder campaign. Try both in your own flows to find which one works harder for your shoppers.

5. Send back-in-stock alerts

A shopper who saves a sold-out item has told you they want it, so let them know when it returns. Swym’s data puts the median revenue per back-in-stock alert at $63. Brighton reports that its Back in Stock alerts consistently recover thousands in lost sales.

6. Plan out your follow-ups

Swym’s data shows that the average shopper takes 41 days to purchase, and 10% take 120 days or more. One send will not cover that stretch, so consider planning a sequence of reminders, price drop alerts, and back-in-stock alerts.

Personalize your marketing with wishlist data

7. Build segments in Klaviyo

Send each group the message that fits what they saved. GAÂLA uses Swym's native Klaviyo integration to build segments from wishlist data. Petit Bateau Japan used it to send wishlist reminders, low stock alerts, and price drop alerts, and reported 11.53% revenue growth in the 3 months after enabling it. Swym connects to Klaviyo, so your flows can act on what shoppers saved.

8. Treat every wishlist save as zero-party data

Zero-party data is information shoppers tell you directly, and a saved product is a clear example. BCG’s research found that about four-fifths of more than 23,000 consumers are comfortable with personalized experiences. BCG also calls zero-party data the most valuable kind. Use your saves to choose which products you recommend and which emails you send.

9. Merchandise from your most-wishlisted products

Review your top wishlisted items on a regular schedule, the way GAÂLA does. When a design is saved often but is not in its bestsellers collection, the team adds it. The team also checks which products convert best and adds those too.

Use wishlist data to plan stock, gifting, and in-store sales

10. Plan inventory with real demand

Saves and back-in-stock requests show you what shoppers wanted and could not get, so you can restock the products they are asking for. Brighton uses that data to find its most sought-after products and replenish accordingly. Its dashboard shows which products shoppers saved, which they wanted back in stock, and the revenue tied to them.

11. Make wishlists shareable for gifting

Gartner’s consumer survey found that wish lists from friends and family are the top source of gift inspiration at 31%, ahead of Google Search at 22%. Swym’s Gift Registry lets customers build lists for special occasions, so the people shopping for them have a list to buy from.

12. Connect online wishlist saves to your stores

Brighton uses Swym’s APIs to connect wishlist and back-in-stock data to its in-store clienteling tools. Wishlist Plus also brought 700,000 records of customer preference data into wishlists that work across devices. Brighton’s shoppers who use online and offline touchpoints have an over 40% higher lifetime value (LTV) than shoppers who use one channel.

Track your wishlist results and own your shopper data

13. Compare average order value for wishlist users and non-users

Brighton customers who use Wishlist Plus have a 34% higher average order value (AOV) than customers who do not. At Petit Bateau Japan, wishlist items had a 19.87% higher AOV than the store overall. Run the same comparison in your store to find out what your saves earn.

14. Reach your best customers between orders with wishlist reminders

Data from Smile.io’s merchant network shows that 41% of an ecommerce store’s revenue comes from only 8% of its customers, and the top 5% generate 35%. Reminders and back-in-stock alerts give you a reason to contact those customers between purchases.

15. Own your first-party wishlist data

A saved product is first-party data, collected directly from the shopper on your own store. Shopify cites a Google and BCG study in which brands using first-party data for key marketing functions achieved up to 2.9x revenue uplift and 1.5x cost savings. It also notes that consent-based first-party data aligns with regulations like GDPR and CCPA.

Ready to put these plays to work? Swym Wishlist Plus gives your shoppers a place to save what they love and gives you the saves to act on.

Try it now