In the last year or so, I’ve seen SamCart all over the place.
As an internet entrepreneur, I pay especially close attention to the shopping carts people use, and I started noticing more people using SamCart.
As I started seeing ads for SamCart, I joined their email list. I got a few emails praising their service, so I decided to give it a try.
Did it live up to the hype? Here’s my honest SamCart review.
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What is SamCart?
SamCart is a web-based checkout platform that offers conversion-optimized checkout templates along with one-click upsell, order bump, subscription, and payment plan features designed to maximize profit from every sale.
Why most checkout pages suck
Depending on which study you read, 80% of people who “add to cart” on your website will abandon it. If you can get just a small portion of those people to convert, you’ll add a significant amount of money to your bottom line.
SamCart will help you increase conversions.
The whole value proposition of SamCart is that their checkout page templates have been tested down to the last detail, and they are proven to convert better than their competitors. When you’re selling things online, you want to make sure you’re maximizing your conversions, and SamCart will help you do that.
Also, most checkout pages aren’t designed to maximize the profit you make from each sale. Things like order bumps and upsells will help you make more profit from each sale.
For example, I sell a $97 PDF on my website. If I were using a standard checkout form, I wouldn’t be able to add an upsell. However, because I offer an upsell, about one in three visitors accepts my $60 upsell offer.
Because of this simple feature, I add an average of $20 to every single order of this product. That’s like giving myself a 20%+ raise just for having this feature. That means I can spend an extra $20 on advertising to acquire a customer and grow my business even faster.
Before we get started…
There are many online “reviews” where people talk about the product and pitch it without actually using it in order to get an affiliate commission.
I started using Samcart in January 2018 and ACTUALLY use it.
SamCart Characteristics
The main reason SamCart has been able to grow so quickly is because it offers so many features that help online merchants make more money. You can use these features to increase sales and profit whether you have an e-commerce site or sell informational products. SamCart pays for itself pretty quickly.
One-Click Upsells
When I told my friends that I was writing a review of SamCart, they told me to emphasize how great the one-click upsells are, and I agree with them.
If you’re selling online and not offering upsells, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table. In fact, in 2006, Amazon reported that 35% of its sales came from upsells. If Amazon is making that much money from it, don’t you think it deserves your attention?
Upselling increase your average order value. You probably encounter upsells all the time and don’t even know it.
You don’t write HAVE to get the extended warranty for your car, but it’s there as an upsell for people who don’t want to worry about maintenance. You don’t have to have dessert after dinner, but restaurants are happy to offer it.
To stick with the dessert example: Those little $8 cupcakes aren’t a huge amount, but if you’re a restaurant selling dozens of them every night, it adds up.
SamCart makes this process seamless by offering upsells where the customer only has to click a single button to buy your offering. According to the report, SamCart users who use one-click upsells increase their average customer value by a whopping 68.1%.
Checkout pages
A cool feature of SamCart is that they have 18 professionally designed templates that convert. Honestly, I don’t think all of the templates are that great, but I like most of them. My favorite is the classic template.
One big advantage here is that the templates have been used by other proven marketers so you don’t have to spend countless hours creating and testing your own pages.
All of the templates have trustworthy elements like testimonials, guarantees, and security assurances that give your customers the confidence they need to increase their conversions.
Once you select your checkout page, you can easily customize it by changing the colors of the header, footer, buttons, etc. Additionally, you can choose the fields you want to include, and you can add custom bullet points to describe the product your customer is buying (I’ve found bullet points helpful, which is why I use them on all of my sales pages).
All pages are mobile-friendly, which is very important in our increasingly mobile world. One of the reasons I switched to SamCart was because my previous checkout page provider wasn’t as responsive as I wanted.
I do a lot of advertising on Google AdWords, where the majority of my traffic comes from mobile devices. I found that with my old cart, the abandonment rate was higher, which meant I was flushing my ad spend down the toilet. SamCart has helped me increase my conversions via mobile.
They also have a cool “sandbox” mode that lets you make sure everything works before you go live with your product. With my old shopping cart, I actually had to publish everything and then test it. My previous solution was to use PayPal to test payments. With SamCart, I can do it without a credit card (and without damaging my stats).
Cross-sell bumps
Cross-selling is a strategy of selling products that are related to those the customer already owns. If a customer buys a car from you, a cross-sell would be car insurance or gas.
You may know this as bundling. If you bundle the main product and add-on products together, you can increase your profit on each sale. McDonald’s does this extremely well by selling fries and drinks with their burgers.
One page checkout
This feature is unique because it allows you to add several different payment options on a single checkout page. For my $997 online course, I use Teachable, and even they don’t offer this feature. If a customer wants a payment plan, I have to have a separate checkout page. I WISH I could use SamCart.
The one page checkout takes multiple payments to a whole new level because it keeps visitors on the page while they decide how they want to pay. If you’ve ever sold anything online, you know how important it is to keep your visitors on the site.
A/B testing
Isn’t it strange that people talk about split testing their sales pages, their opt-in pages, their email subject lines, and more… but they never talk about testing their checkout page?
It seems crazy, doesn’t it?
If you assume that most of your potential customers are abandoning your checkout page, don’t you think a reasonably good split test could help you get another customer?
I do.
Fortunately, SamCart offers the ability to run live split tests. In the shopping cart world, that’s AMAZING. If you have a 90% abandonment rate and your split testing only brings you ONE additional customer, you are effectively doubling your sales. Yes, DOUBLE your sales. As easy as that.
SamCart lets you change almost any setting you want, so you can test any variation you enjoy. The template can be changed, a different guarantee can be used (I’ve found the longer the better), and other fields can be omitted.
SamCart automatically tests your variations after you create them. You don’t have to do anything except watch the results. You can go to the “AB Test” section in the product settings to see how the variations perform. Once you find a winner, SamCart allows you to simply disable the loser.
The only thing you can’t test with SamCart is the price of your product. If you want to do that, you need to create two different products and run a test between them.
When it comes to A/B testing, experience tells me that you should test the big things first (like completely different templates) and then work your way to the small details. Oh, and always wait until you have a statistically significant sample size before giving up on it.
Subscription Savers
When I started selling subscription products online, I was naive enough to think that everyone would always pay on time. I thought if I was good enough to pay my bills and meet my obligations, everyone else would too.
Boy, was I naive. Turns out there are some real losers online. People who refuse charges or cancel credit cards just to dodge payments. Usually, once that happens, your subscription revenue is gone. Aside from legal action (like sending a reminder letter… if you have the customer’s address), you can’t get your money back. Sad.
But now, with SamCart, your subscriptions are protected against declined payments and expired credit cards. SamCart notifies your customer when a payment fails – the email sent by SamCart contains a link that allows the customer to update their payment in their Inbox. This means you don’t have to waste your valuable time trying to turn your customers away.
If a customer doesn’t update the payment information after multiple attempts, SamCart automatically cancels the subscription. SamCart marks these customers as “delinquent” in your account so that you know who they are and can reach out to them.
Partner Center
One of the best things about selling products online is that you can recruit a whole army of affiliates to promote your products. Your products do not need to be advertised nor do you need to spend money promoting them. If you can get affiliates to promote your products, you only pay them when they make a sale for you.
SamCart allows you to create your own personal army of affiliates who will sell your products for you using the Affiliate Center. SamCart automatically generates a Affiliate Signup page for you – where others can apply to promote your products.
You will receive a link to this page so you can send it to potential affiliates, post it on your website, or send it to your email list. Whenever my email subscribers haven’t bought anything from me for several months, I invite them to become an affiliate. Hey, if they don’t buy anything, it’s still an opportunity for me to profit from them.
When a potential affiliate fills out your application, they’ll see a message that their account is “pending approval”. When that happens, you’ll receive an email notification that he’s applied. It will also contain buttons that allow you to approve or decline the person’s application. You can also set it up to automatically accept partners if you want.
SamCart’s default commission for affiliates is 50%. However, you can customize this payout the way you want. You can pay your affiliates a flat commission (a set dollar amount per sale) or a percentage. I’ve had a lot of success increasing the affiliate payout for high performing affiliates to give them an incentive to sell even more.
My favorite SamCart feature
My favorite SamCart feature is hands down the great training and customer support they offer. They have tons of videos in what they call “Knowledge Base” that show you how to use their software (even though it’s already pretty basic) and they provide a lot of education on how to make more money selling online.
The education alone is worth the price. They have a complete library of product information, tutorials, webinars, and more.
I had to include that fact in my SamCart review.
How much does SamCart cost?
SamCart has three different plans:
Basic ($19 per month)
Pro ($99 per month)
Premium ($199 per month)
Even at the Premium level, SamCart is an absolute bargain with all the features they give you. However, I’ve found that the basic version is good enough for many online entrepreneurs, but if you do a lot of business online, you should get the Pro plan.
Also, keep in mind that if you pay annually, you will get a discount if you want to save some money.
I suggest you take advantage of the free trial (to make sure it’s definitely right for you) and then pay annually to save money. If you pay annually, the Pro plan costs $888 per year (saving you $300) and the Premium plan costs $1,788 per year (saving you $600).
SamCart offers a 14-day free trial (and Money-Back Guarantee)
If you’re thinking about giving SamCart a try, they offer a 14-day free trial.
That means you can try them absolutely free, and if they don’t make you more money than your old shopping cart (or you just hate them for some reason), then you can fire them. You can cancel and walk away.
Plus, they have a 30-day 100% money-back guarantee anyway, which further lowers the risk.
You could make up to five times more money on SamCart than you would on other platforms. Try it out, and see for yourself.
