Shopping cart abandonment costs online stores billions of dollars annually in lost sales. If you have an eCommerce store, optimizing the customer journey and pleasing online shoppers can help your online store reduce shopping cart abandonment.
eCommerce brands might seek a silver bullet to stifle shopping cart abandonment and secure more sales. However, the best cart abandonment solutions are tied to the customer journey and the User Experience of your eCommerce site.
This post will begin by explaining cart abandonment. In addition, we will explore the most effective cart abandonment solutions so your eCommerce business can minimize lost sales and improve its conversion rate.
What Is Cart Abandonment?
Cart abandonment occurs when website visitors initiate the checkout process but exit before completing the purchase. Cart abandonment can also refer to users that add items to their shopping cart but exit before they even begin the checkout process.
eCommerce cart abandonment can lead to significant lost revenue. As a result, online stores are always looking for ways to optimize their cart abandonment rates and recover abandoned carts.
There is no perfect cart abandonment solution. Online retailers might wish there were powerful cart abandonment software to drastically reduce cart abandonment, but there is not.
Shoppers abandon carts for several reasons, and in some cases, there are window shoppers who never had an intention to ever make a purchase. eCommerce businesses must understand that cart abandonment rates reflect the User Experience, from site navigation to checkout.
While there might not be a silver bullet that can magically reduce cart abandonment rates, there are steps your business can take to reduce abandoned carts.
The Most Effective Cart Abandonment Solutions
The best cart abandonment solutions are focused on customer journeys. Understanding lost customers and their motivations for leaving your website is vital to improving the cart abandonment rate of your store.
Instead of searching for shopping cart abandonment solutions in vain, focus on the quality of your website. These tips and solutions will help your store reduce abandoned shopping carts and secure more potential customers.
The most effective shopping cart abandonment solutions to employ on your website include the following:
- Offer free shipping
- Enable guest checkout
- Offer payment options
- Utilize exit pop-ups
- Streamline the checkout process
- Visualize progress
- Add thumbnails to cart items
- Improve page load times
- Utilize trust signals
Offer Free Shipping
One of the most common reasons many customers abandon their cart is due to shipping costs. If a customer reaches the end of the checkout process and discovers an additional shipping charge, they are more likely to abandon their cart before making the purchase.
Offering free shipping is an effective way to reduce your cart abandonment rate. This approach gives customers less reason to leave before making a purchase. It is important to ensure that your shipping policy is clear.
Plus, this is a great opportunity to upsell your customers. For example, you don’t have to offer every customer free express shipping, but you can entice customers to buy more by offering them free shipping on orders over a certain amount.
Enable Guest Checkout
Do customers have to create an account on your website to make a purchase? Most customers, especially casual shoppers, and first-time visitors don’t want to create an account. An easy way to combat cart abandonment is to allow customers to check out without creating an account.
Creating an account before making a purchase is another barrier to a sale. As an eCommerce website, the goal should be to minimize the barriers that keep customers from your checkout page.
The more barriers that stand in the way of a sale, the fewer sales you will ultimately make. If you want customers to sign-up, wait until after they make a purchase to prompt them with account creation.
Offer Payment Options
Customers will abandon their shopping cart if you don’t offer them their preferred payment method. Payment processing is a sensitive area. Customers want to use methods that make them comfortable.
The best practice is offering as many payment options as possible to ensure you are not missing out on any potential sales. In addition, creating a survey and asking customers what their preferred payment method is can be helpful. This customer data can help your business create a better experience for customers.
Utilize Exit Pop-Ups
Exit intent pop-ups can help your business make one last pitch to customers before they abandon their cart. When a user hovers to a new tab or the exit button, a pop-up is activated, making them an additional offer.
Usually, businesses will offer additional savings, free shipping, etc. Your business can work to craft an exit intent message that best serves its purposes. By using intent pop-ups, your business can save a few potential customers from leaving without making a purchase.
Streamline the Checkout Process
Customers are more likely to abandon their cart if your checkout process is too long or involved. We touched upon the concept of barriers earlier in the post when referencing guest checkouts. A long or involved checkout process is another barrier to purchase.
The smoother and simpler your checkout process, the more sales you are likely to make. You should know how long it takes an average user to complete a purchase, and you should try to reduce this number as much as possible.
For example, a multi-page checkout takes more time, is more complicated, and offers users more opportunities to abandon their purchase. A single-page checkout is more efficient and gives customers fewer opportunities to abandon the sale.
Visualize Progress
A checkout progress indicator is a great way to limit cart abandonment. People are impatient; if they are unsure how much time and effort they will have to expend on the purchase process, they are more likely to abandon it.
When shopping in a physical store, customers in line at checkout can see how close they are to the end. A visual progress meter that tracks the checkout process is helpful in showing customers how close they are to the end.
If your checkout process is longer than one page, it is important to include a visual representation of the user’s progress through the process to limit cart abandonment.
Add Thumbnails to Cart Items
If a customer forgets what they are buying, they are more likely to abandon their purchase. Adding a thumbnail image of the items in their cart is an effective way to remind customers what they are purchasing.
Improve Page Load Times
If your website is slow to load, you will lose customers. Slow-loading pages are a massive barrier in the checkout process. If you want to reduce cart abandonment, ensure that your website is loading promptly and processing orders efficiently.
Utilize Trust Signals
Trust signals like badges from BBB, Google, PayPal, Visa, etc., go a long way in establishing customer trust in your brand. Lack of trust is a common reason why users abandon their carts.
Consumers are wary of being scammed online or having their information stolen. As a result, it is vital to build their trust in your store and position your brand as trustworthy. Trust signals are helpful in accomplishing this task.
Final Thoughts
There will always be shoppers that abandon their carts. You will never reduce the cart abandonment rate to zero. However, by following the tips in this post, your eCommerce store can drastically improve the abandonment rate and make more sales.
If you want to learn more about cart abandonment or eCommerce, reach out to a skilled eCommerce development partner like Koombea.
