You’re almost there. You can see it live on your Google Analytics account. A customer is making a purchase on your website.
Yay, a new sal… and nope. Another abandoned cart.
Rest assured, shopping cart abandonment is a common occurrence online. There are so many options that a tiny little detail could tip the scale and make visitors quit your website before completing their sales.
So why does it happen? How can this affect retailers? And what can you do about it?
Read on to learn more about our seven recommendations for keeping your consumers from fleeing their purchases!
What is Online Shopping Cart Abandonment?
Abandon shopping carts are the tendency to start the online shopping process in an e-store only to leave before completing the full checkout process.
In other words, shoppers abandon their digital shopping carts before finalizing their transactions and making their purchases.
Calculating shopping cart abandonment rate?
Shopping cart abandonment rate is the percentage of online shoppers that begin the buying process by adding an item to their cart but leave the site before entering their credit card details and completing the full checkout.
To calculate it, you need to:
– Divide the number of completed transactions by the number of visitors who initiated a checkout process
– Subtract by 1
– Then multiply it by 100
Cart Abandonment Rate = [1 – (# of completed transactions / # of visitors who initiated a checkout process)] x 100
Imagine you have 100 visitors who accessed the checkout page on your website and 20 who finalized their purchases.
The shopping cart abandonment rate would be [1 – (20/100)] x 100 = 80%.
What are some average shopping cart abandonment rates?
The rate of shopping cart abandonment for online stores may vary according to industry and products.
SaleCycle shows that the average cart abandonment rate worldwide in 2021 is 81,08%.
According to their studies of online retailers, this rate was greater among travel, with an average rate of 87.08%, followed by fashion, with 84.43%. Retail and utility products registered better conversion rates. And digital cart abandonment rates of 77.01 percent and 75.80 percent are good signs of successful marketing efforts.
Why Is Shopping Cart Abandonment a Problem for Retailers?
Shopping cart abandonment is a real problem for online retailers because all abandoned shopping carts ultimately imply lost sales and lost customers.
Online stores must invest to understand why customers abandon their carts and fix the problems.
The Most Common Reasons for Customers to Abandon the Checkout Process
Online store owners should know the main reasons causing an e-shopper to leave a website without purchasing to fix and limit the negative impact on their business.
There can be many reasons why visitors would abandon their online shopping carts. Let’s list the main ones:
High hidden costs
Nothing worse than comparing the prices of the items you want to purchase, making your choice, and then finding out those necessary unexpected costs to complete your purchase.
Whether they are high shipping costs, credit or debit card payment fees, or any other extra charges, think that unwanted added costs at the end of the buying journey can be frustrating and make your visitors leave your website immediately!
Creating a customer account
Asking your customers to create an account or fill in a registration form can be annoying. This is one of the main reasons why cart abandonment happens at the shopping cart stage.
Customers don’t like to take more time than necessary, so giving them another step before they finish the purchase explains why many visitors leave sites without buying anything.
Offering a complex shopping process
A poor user experience is one of the most common cart abandonment reasons.
Shoppers expect eCommerce sites to have simple, clean, and fast checkouts: in other words, a checkout design page that converts.
This means that online retailers should avoid forcing customers to fill in too many fields or to create an account.
They should also work on the performance of their online store to make sure there are no website errors.
The design needs to be clean and reassuring, whereas the sales funnel should be without any complexities.
Distrust in the online retailer
Building your customers’ trust by providing enough information for them is one of the most important things that you should do in order to win back visitors who abandoned their carts or to get more sales.
Prominently displaying customer reviews can be one of the best ways to tell your visitors that you can be trusted.
Slow delivery
Another key reason for abandoned carts is slow delivery times and a lack of delivery options.
If there are no or few alternatives with lengthy shipping periods, many clients who require their product immediately will be dissatisfied and will abandon their carts to go to a competitor.
7 Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment on Your Website
Improve shipping options for your customers
Shipping options and shipping costs are usually the surprises online shoppers discover during the checkout process.
Offering several shipping options and prices can be a huge factor in converting potential customers.
To lower your rates and offer a better shipping experience without any extra cost, check out our free shipping software.
Offer a guest checkout option
If you haven’t implemented a guest checkout option yet, this is the time to do so.
A customer account may not be necessary for all visitors. So guest checkout can help increase your sales with customers that are in a rush or are simply lazy to fill in your registration form.
Offer a small discount
Offering an incentive such as free shipping, 10% off the next purchase when the customer completes their order, or offering money through gift cards if customers spend over $100 could be great ways to lower abandoned carts.
Improve the checkout experience
Review the design of your checkout page if need be, and don’t forget your mobile shoppers!
Make sure your website works correctly and shows a great checkout flow on mobile devices too.
We tend to forget, but mobile sales now account for a significant part of all online business.
Offer customer chat support
Offer live chat support 24/7, so your customers never feel alone while trying to finalize their orders.
When browsing unfamiliar websites, potential customers may have questions or doubts about payment options, shipping costs, delivery time, or whatnot.
A live chat is a great reassurance tool to help prevent abandoned carts.
Send abandoned cart emails
Implementing a system that will automatically send abandoned cart emails to potential customers can be a great help to recover carts!
Explain why they should complete their purchase, and offer them free shipping if they do it right now!
Add buyer reviews on your eCommerce website
If you have a website with buyer reviews, a simple idea is to implement them at the bottom of your shopping cart page.
This is one of the best ways to convince visitors that they should purchase from you instead of other sites and to gain the trust of your online shoppers.
Nowadays, online customers are more selective in which websites they shop at due to the increase in online competitors and retailers.
The customer’s journey and experience on a website, the checkout process, the options about the order details such as account creation, shipping, and payment options, or the abandoned cart retargeting strategy – all need to improve dramatically to prevent your visitors from becoming cart abandoners.
Although there are a lot of elements to consider, the most essential thing is to make your customers’ experience on your website as easy as possible.
What about your website? What is the cart abandonment rate? Have you made a recent check of your checkout process and personally tested it? Are you using abandoned cart emails to recover abandoned carts?
