Tips to Kill Shopping Cart Abandonment
Are you struggling with the conversion rate on your online store even after investing loads of money in lead generation?
If you answer yes, you are among those online sellers who often deal with shopping cart abandonment rates. The average cart abandonment rate is more than 70%. This means online shoppers add items to their shopping carts without buying them and disappear. This results in fewer sales of your online store and a massive downfall of customer experience.
This article will discuss the root cause of people disappearing from your online store, leaving carts abandoned, and effective steps to reduce it.
Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment – Definition & Calculation Formula
Shopping cart abandonment is a term used for ecommerce sites for an incomplete purchase. It has nothing to do with the availability and visibility of a website.
Cart abandonment is when a potential customer selects the items in a shopping cart for an online order but leaves all at once before completing the purchase. The products in the cart are considered abandoned by that customer, who placed them in a shopping cart. However, it has yet to be made through the transaction.
The abandonment cart is calculated by dividing the total successful transactions by the total number of abandoned add-to-carts. The outcome will be subtracted from one and then multiplied by 100.
Cart Abandonment – Impact & Possible Reasons
For online sellers, shopping cart abandonment is a curse on the e-commerce industry. Any friction during checkout will cause a potential customer to turn to another buying source.
Cart abandonment impacts directly on a company’s revenue and user experience. Not only this, but cart abandonment is also quite costly for customer procurement and retention.
A long-term cart abandonment problem can negatively impact customer loyalty. Moreover, e-commerce brands can be deprived of lifetime value when customers abandon their cart due to heavy friction in checkout.
Common Reasons for Cart Abandonment
- High additional costs, such as shipping, taxes, delivery, etc.
- Researching to buy later
- Force to create a new account
- Worried about the website security
- Website bugs, errors, and crashes
- No fast-delivery option
- Web pages are not mobile-friendly
- Complex checkout process
- Concerned about payment security
- Unsatisfactory return policy
- Substandard payment options
- Inadequate customer support
- Lack of brand trust
9 Proven Strategies to Kill Shopping Cart Abandonment
Here are some of the best strategies you can use to reduce the problem of abandonment carts effectively.
- Remove Unexpected Charges
- Provide Free Shipping
- Website Optimization
- Showcase Website Security
- Consider Mobile Users
- Provide Multiple Payment Options
- Streamline Checkout Process
- Use Remarketing Strategies
- Provide Excellent Customer Support
Remove Unexpected Charges
It is frustrating when online shoppers are asked to pay more during checkout than what was on the front page. This is one of the main reasons a customer will abandon the shopping cart, creating a wrong impression of your brand.
Eliminating all the hidden charges, including shipping, surcharge, etc., and providing all the relevant information about extra costs or fees can reduce shopping cart abandonment.
Provide Free Shipping
Extra shipping cost is another possible reason for the cart being abandoned. Most online shoppers look for products with free shipping that feel they are getting a great deal.
Ensure profit and free shipping by:
- Offering free delivery at a certain threshold – You can maximize your profit by cutting shoppers’ expenses. This increases total order value and results in lower cart abandonment.
- Including delivery cost in product price – Add delivery cost to the product’s price and offer free shipping by including profit.
- Providing free delivery in certain areas – Free delivery to areas near your warehouse address.
Website Optimization
A good website user interface matters the most regarding online sales. You can optimize your website in multiple ways:
- Website Speed – A fast website that loads in seconds without hassle boosts revenue by maximizing sales opportunities. On the other hand, a slow website will compromise the user’s patience and interest in buying the product. You can optimize your website speed using SEO techniques. Some of these such as minifying CSS & HTML, compressing images, uninstalling unnecessary plugins, and using a fast & reliable hosting service.
- Easy to Navigate – A simple & easy website navigation provides an excellent user experience. You can make it easy for customers to save & return to shopping carts or add options like quick reviews to make it easy for the visitors.
- Progress Indicator on Checkout Page – Many times, a long & complex transaction process leads to cart abandonment. By displaying a progress indicator during checkout, you can reduce cart abandonment.
Showcase Website Security
A website’s red flags, such as poor website design, no SSL certificate, and an untrusted payment gateway, can deter online customers from buying a product.
Website security is the critical factor that leads to shopping cart abandonment. It ensures an online user that the website is safe & secure. One way to safeguard your website is by using a valid & high-security SSL certificate. It protects the visitors by avoiding any insecure interruptions warning to their browser.
This secure socket layer (SSL) certificate creates an encrypted connection between a browser and a secured website. Not only does it keep the internet connection secure, but it also prevents cyber-attacks. SSL certificates become more important when you gather personal information from online users, such as personal & financial data.
Most e-commerce websites use cheap Wildcard SSL certificate that secures unlimited sub-domains and servers.
Consider Mobile Users
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People like to shop online from their smartphones & tablets, ensuring a mobile-friendly website. You can also provide a mobile app for the website to the users.
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Provide Multiple Payment Options
| Another reason for cart abandonment is limited payment or single currency options on site. By offering multiple payment & currency options you can ensure a seamless shopping experience for online users worldwide. |  |
Streamline Checkout Process
Complexity during checkout can be a primary reason for online shopping cart abandonment. To make the checkout process as simple and painless as possible, eliminate confusion while reducing friction points, and improve checkout UX.
Streamline Checkout UX by:
- Reducing form fields by asking only relevant and necessary information.
- Offer a guest checkout option that lets visitors share & control their personal information.
- Adhere to an intuitive cart that helps customers know & guides them during their purchase journey.
- Make your shopping cart easy to find by minimizing the number of clicks to get to the checkout page.
- Add a progress bar during the purchase journey with a visual indicator that helps shoppers know how close they are to completing the purchase.
- Make your CTA simple by avoiding clever quotes, such as ‘Get this today,’ ‘Give it to me,’ instead of ‘Buy Now,’ or ‘Add to Cart.’
Use Remarketing Strategies
A remarketing campaign is one of the most powerful online marketing tools that helps bring lost customers back. You can use different social media networks and websites tailored to these ads for your remarketing campaign to target these abandoners. Send emails with catchy subjects and offers to follow up on the cart abandonment, which increases the chances of conversion rate.
To implement remarketing strategies effectively, use your website’s analytics.
Provide Excellent Customer Support
The next killing strategy of cart abandonment is delivering excellent customer support to your website visitors. Many times, shoppers tend to move away from an online website when they feel unsatisfied with their queries and unable to reach customer support.
Consider connecting with phone calls, emails, FAQs, live chat, and social media platforms.
Conclusion
E-commerce shopping cart abandonment is a critical issue troubling online retailers from the outset. Moreover, there is no such thing as a 0% cart abandonment rate. Online shoppers will abandon their cart for an unexpected reason.
However, with a combination of the above strategies, you can attain the goal of preventing & reducing cart abandonment and converting online shoppers into loyal customers.
So, start implementing the cart abandonment strategies to find `the best one for your buyers.
