Last Updated on January 2, 2021 by Guest
Shopping cart abandonment is a phenomenon that affects many e-commerce businesses and causes them to lose sales. This happens when customers add an item or items in their cart but don’t go through the purchase. On average, 69.57 percent of shopping carts are abandoned by customers for different reasons.
Reducing shopping-cart abandonment can bring in more sales revenue and help your start-up grow. To do that, it’s essential to know what causes customers to abandon their carts before checkout.
Why Do Customers Abandon Their Carts?
A study by Baymard Institute found that customers abandon their cart not just because they changed their minds but also because of issues with the retailer’s checkout process, website, available payment methods, and among others.
Here the most common reasons customers abandon their carts, according to a Baymard Institute research:
- High extra costs (e.g., shipping fee, tax, and extra fees)
- Need to create an account before checkout
- The overly long and complicated checkout process
- Total order cost is not readily viewable
- Website crashed
- Website security is questionable
- Delivery too slow
- Unsatisfactory return policy
- Limited payment options
- Credit card declined
Listed above are the usual reasons consumers abandon their carts during checkout, but there can be other factors at play as to why it happens to your business. See how many of your customers are abandoning their carts, and look into their reasons. Set up an automated follow-up email for abandoned carts to help with that.
What Can You Do to Reduce Cart Abandonment?
You can craft a truly effective strategy to reduce abandoned carts once you have adequate data, but that takes time to collect. In the meantime, here are a few solutions that you can implement to mitigate the problem.
Offer Free Shipping or Shipping Discount Vouchers
High extra costs are the number one reason customers abandon their carts. You can solve this by offering free shipping or shipping discounts. This may put an additional financial burden on your business, so consider the pros and cons before offering this benefit.
Customers love free shipping, but free shipping may increase business costs considerably. The good news is that you can reduce your business burden by choosing a low-cost shipping service.
Many courier services offer low rates for slower deliveries, which you can offer to your customers free of charge. Ensure transparent about the delivery speed, and give your customers an option for faster delivery for an extra fee.
Set a minimum order for free shipping. This will help generate more sales and cover the extra cost to counter the cost of offering free shipping. Most customers are happy to spend more on a product they like over shipping.
Make Your Website Use-Friendly
A user-friendly interface is always preferable, no matter which demographic your customers belong to. An overly complicated and crowded website interface makes it difficult to shop, causing frustration to customers, ultimately leading to cart abandonment.
Make sure your website design is neat and easy to navigate. Don’t pack the page with too many elements and distractions. Use fonts and colors that are easy to see and read. Ensure that important buttons (e.g., Add to Cart and Checkout) and the search bar can be seen easily. In general, use a simple and straightforward interface. Finally, always optimize your website for mobile.
Simplify the Checkout Process
Checkout is the last phase before a successful sale; hence, you should make it as quick and as simple as possible. Enable guest checkout, so you don’t alienate some customers. You can set up an automated follow-up email system to encourage nonmember customers to create an account after purchasing, but don’t force them to create one right away to check out their items.
Ensure all the important details, such as the order summary, the total cost, discounts, and other fees, are displayed upfront and easy for the buyer to see. In addition to that, ensure that the checkout steps are clear and easy to follow for everyone.
Improve Your Shipping Process
Make your shipping process more efficient for faster delivery to reduce shopping cart abandonment and increase customer satisfaction. Consider investing in an e-commerce shipping software to streamline your internal shipping process. This type of software helps create a shipment, find the most affordable shipping rates, and buy postage much more efficient and convenient.
Improving your inventory management is another thing you can do to streamline your shipping process. Ensuring that your inventory is up-to-date makes you more efficient and effective at meeting customer demands and keeping your business running smoothly.
Offer More Payment Methods
Give your customers several payment method options. Make sure to include all the convenient payment methods, such as credit cards, e-wallets, and bank transfers. However, don’t discount other payment methods, such as mobile payments, prepaid cards, direct deposit, and even cash. Cover as many bases as you can to prevent alienating some customers.
Improve Your Website Security
Online security is critical, especially with cases of identity theft and fraudulent purchases. Customers need to know that they can trust your e-commerce business with their credit card information and personal details.
Hence, invest in improving the cybersecurity of your website. Get security certifications from third parties, such as Norton, GoDaddy, and Microsoft. Display your security certificates on your website somewhere users can easily see.
Also, make sure to create a privacy policy that protects your customers’ personal data and invests in your company’s cybersecurity and in protecting buyer information. Never use your customers’ personal data in any way that violates their privacy and for other purposes that they did not consent to.
Build a Robust Email Marketing Campaign
Getting marketing emails can be annoying when they’re overdone, but customers often feel appreciated when businesses send follow-up and thank-you emails, especially personalized emails.
Automated emails using templates that sound stiff and overly businesslike don’t work for most customers. Many people find these types of emails displeasing and lacking a human touch. That said, make sure to craft your follow-up and thank-you emails in a way that sounds warm, friendly, and enthusiastic without sounding too salesly.
For follow-up emails, write something that will remind the customer why they added the item to their cart to entice them to purchase.
Final Thoughts
Reducing cart abandonment offers many benefits to your business. Not only will it help increase sales, but it will also attract more loyal customers. Addressing the issues that cause cart abandonment can improve the overall operation of your business. This is incredibly important for both start-ups and established businesses.