Ever browsed an eCommerce store, liked a product, and add it to the cart, but forgotten it till the next time you accidentally stumble upon it? eCommerce cart abandonment is when users don’t finish the purchase of a product after adding it to their cart. This happens for a variety of reasons besides simple forgetfulness though.
Cart abandonment is nothing new for eCommerce store owners. eCommerce continues to grow, especially mobile devices lead online shopping with over 76% of shoppers preferring to make purchases on mobile devices because of its convenience. But cart abandonment rates have also been stable, and it is estimated that an average of 69-81% of carts are abandoned by buyers across all markets.
Abandoned carts are lost sales opportunities and as an eCommerce business owner, you should take steps to tackle this issue for boosted sales and increased revenue.
Let us see some ways to reduce cart abandonment and the steps you can take to increase sales, in this article.
Rate of Cart Abandonment
It is important to understand, you have to understand how many carts your prospective customers are abandoning. It will give store owner the perspective and helps them take appropriate steps to reduce it.
Here is a simple formula to calculate the rate of cart abandonment.
In simple words, the cart abandonment rate is the percentage of visitors who finished purchases after adding products to the cart, compared to the total number of visitors who created a cart.
Why does cart abandonment happen?
The requirement to Create an Account
Not all visitors want to create an account in order to make purchases. While creating an account allows store owners to capture leads and grow their email list, this doesn’t hold any appeal to the buyers. Consumers like to have the option to search for alternatives before making a purchase. Even repeating buyers might wish to do so without creating an account.
Product Quantity
A customer might be interested in buying a certain number of units of the same product, or a single unit to test them before buying it in larger quantities. Not all eCommerce stores allow for this purchase pattern. This is another factor that discourages prospective buyers. This is especially true when the quantity restrictions show up on the checkout page, the last stage of sales funnels.
Additional Costs
Some eCommerce stores show a price on the product page and a different, higher price on the checkout page. This might include shipping and other additional costs. Customers can find this as deceiving additional costs which leads them to abandon their carts.
Complicated Checkout Process
A customer wants to purchase a product quickly, which means they want a quick way to finish purchases. A lengthy checkout process with a lot of input needed from the customer’s end tends to discourage the customer from finishing the checkout.
Payment
In a way, this is similar to and a part of complicated checkouts. eCommerce stores support diverse payment methods and currencies to cater to customers of different demographics, geographical locations, and financial statuses. Having narrow, rigid payment methods leads to customers who would otherwise make purchases, abandoning their carts. And new customers can be reluctant to share sensitive information like their credit card, address, and other details.
Delivery and Returns
Reliable and flexible delivery are the basics for eCommerce businesses. Customers want flexibility in receiving their products, like home delivery, pickup hubs, and flexible delivery hours. Fair and reasonable return time also builds customer trust and loyalty. Lacking these can hit an eCommerce business badly. Stores that provide such services often perform better in the long run than the ones that don’t.
Ways To Reduce Cart Abandonment
With that said, what should eCommerce store owners do to reduce the number of abandoned carts in their stores? Some of the answers lie in the reasons why carts are abandoned in the first place, as you will see below.
Easy Checkout
A straightforward checkout process is a simple way to reduce cart abandonment. This includes providing flexible payment methods, having open pricing, displaying the cart value throughout the checkout process, and having a minimum number of steps from the product page to the checkout page.
Retargeting, Follow-Up Emails
Customers abandon their carts at a lot of stages of the sales process. Use relevant advertising with tools like Google Ads and Facebook Ads to remind customers of their interest in the product. If you use an email list as a lead magnet, sending abandoned cart reminder emails can help too. Adding discounts in these reminder emails encourages customers who are otherwise disinterested to finish their purchase.
Building Brand Trust
To overcome the customer’s hesitation to make a purchase in your store, you can provide customer testimonials to bring social proof. This particularly helps you in gaining new prospects whose purchase decisions can be positively influenced by customer testimonials.
Flexible Shipping and Payment
It helps to invest in a reliable shipping infrastructure to give your customers an easy shopping experience. By offering different types of delivery methods and timings, customers’ trust in your brand increases. The same is true for payment. Offering different payment methods, and supporting major currencies and digital wallets makes the purchase process easy for customers.
Tools to Recover Abandoned Carts
Use tools and plugins to understand where cart abandonment occurs so you can nip the problem in the bud. Abandoned cart recovery plugins help you with this by sending automated recovery emails, rate of abandoned cart recovery, and other useful metrics to reduce the number of carts abandoned and increase sales.
Steps to Increase Conversion
Let us now take a look at some best practices to optimize eCommerce websites to increase conversion and sales, thereby growing the revenue.
Website Speed
Optimize and regularly conduct website audits to have fast-loading landing pages. A slow website can cost you as users can be frustrated by a slow and cluttered website.
Mobile Optimization
As noted earlier, mobile commerce holds the major share in eCommerce and it is imperative that your website offers the same experience it offers on desktop devices. A website that is not optimized for mobile devices will miss out on a large share of customers who prefer to shop online.
Surveys and Feedbacks
Use contact forms and send feedback emails to get the opinion of your customers to understand their needs better and strategize accordingly.
Website Content
Regularly monitor and update the content of your website with to be relevant and to provide the best browsing experience for your visitors. A website with outdated content and data is not going to inspire prospective customers to purchase from it.
Email Marketing
Capture leads by providing giveaways or having newsletters to regularly connect with your customers and build an email list that also includes prospects. It serves to send personalized emails to share cart abandonment, offers, product launches, and update emails. By keeping the customers engaged, your brand stays relevant and memorable in their minds.
A/B Testing
Conducting A/B testing is another great way to understand what is working for you and what is not, by directly using different approaches in all aspects from website design to where cart abandonment usually occurs. This helps you adapt to the needs of your customers and improve their experience, as well as your sales and revenue.
Though it is a thorn in the side of all eCommerce store owners, the right approach can reduce cart abandonment in your store. I hope this article helps you in getting started with it. For any suggestions and comments, reach out to us in the comments section.
Abandoned Cart Recovery Plugins You Should Check Out
- ELEX WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Retainful – WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Recovery
- Abandoned Cart Recovery for WooCommerce
