Shopping Cart Abandonment

If you run an eCommerce shop, you probably have had sleepless and painful nights seeing online shopping cart abandonment. It is saddening to see a sale so close yet so far away. Many eCommerce stores are frantically looking for avenues to motivate clients to finish their purchases. 

This article provides clear guidelines and tips to help you achieve this, understand the causes of online shopping cart abandonment, and shed light on what is cart abandonment. You will be surprised at how easy some of these tips are and can be executed to increase sales. However, a proper understanding of the entire buying process is essential so ensure you pay attention to every cycle step. Some of the tips are outlined below.

FACT: The Average Cart Abandonment Rate Across All Industries is 69.57%.

Minimize price shocks

Price shocks occur due to added shipping costs that show up at the end, exponentially increasing the price of a product. Most clients are shocked and angered by the sudden ‘hidden’ charge that creates mistrust and discourages them from finishing the order. To reduce the number of shopping cart abandonments, ensure you make clients aware of any shipping fee charges and provide enticing incentives. Here is an example of a price shock:

(Image Credit: NN/g)

If you must charge a shipping fee, show the clients the amount upfront and ensure you devise ways to justify the price like personalized feedback, prompt and fast delivery, and the ability to track their shipment. Such incentives are likely to motivate clients to pay shipping costs as some prefer efficient service rather than saving on cost. Knowing how much they have to pay upfront ensures they are not shocked with the total value allowing them to see the deal and reduce the number of shopping cart abandonment. 

Send email immediately

The internet is full of various distractions that may account for shopping cart abandonment negative effects. Some clients may also be browsing in the middle of other engagements making it hard for them to complete a purchase. However, you can help them complete their purchases by sending emails immediately after a cart is abandoned to ensure a shopper is motivated to return and finish the purchase. For example:

(Image Credit: Bronto)

Prompt emails with a call to action and links provide clients a quick direction back to the site to enable them to finish their purchase. It also acts as a reminder prompting them of an unfinished business they need to return to and enable you to close a sale. Dividing the follow-up emails and spreading them through a time frame enable you to classify the client and customize the information that motivates them to revisit the site.

Provide a guest check-out option

Online shopping is quickly gaining popularity as more shoppers prefer to purchase products from their homes’ comfort. Amid the pandemic, most individuals are focused on having products delivered to their homes, making eCommerce the most secure avenue to shop. With this said, it is becoming too annoying to continually create accounts and profiles on every e-commerce store to enable the purchase of products.

Most shoppers do not remember their login details, making you miss out on sales as they may be denied access to the online store. Thus, one should allow a guest to check out an option that allows a client to pick their product and proceed to the check-out section without creating a profile. For instance:

(Image Credit: Oro Inc.)

You can utilize the shopping cart area to capture essential details duplicated in the profile section, allowing you to get the required information and not lose out on a client. Guest check out options ensure clients continually visit the store as the hustle is less and provides an opportunity for you to increase your overall sales and attract more traffic.

Identify funnel leaks

Funnel leaks identify the stages shoppers leave the e-store. Funnel leaks provide accurate data on how long a client stayed on the page and at what part they left, helping you understand shopping cart abandonment negative effects. Identifying and adequately analyzing funnel leaks enables an online store to understand their weak points and provide them with an opportunity to minimize clients’ fallouts. 

It provides a chance to understand which store pages are weak or problematic and simplify them to ensure clients do not get tired due to lengthy processes. Funnel leaks also help shopper’s classification and identify their shipping likes providing an opportunity for target marketing to increase sales. It helps me understand what cart abandonment is and its effects.

They also inform a store of their weak points and areas where they lose sales to help them properly strategize and tighten their loose ropes. Accurate information provided by google analytics ensures you rightly identify these weak areas and reduce shopping cart abandonment negative effects.

Simplify navigation

An eCommerce shop should focus on product identification, purchase, and shipment stages. Minimize the page navigation and reduce the number of clicks and prompts to ensure a smooth purchase process. Having an e-commerce store that is user friendly and easy to navigate ensures shoppers are not confused or carried away by too many prompts that hinder them from completing the sale process. 

Avoid the filling of too many forms or having excessively detailed forms that make the customer confused or suspicious. Remember, you are trying to make the client purchase a product not feel like they are interviewing for the product. Using options like on-click that stores customers’ previous information and payment procedure ensures navigation is faster and has fewer steps motivating the shopper to purchase a product and minimize shopping cart abandonment.

Add detailed product description and navigation

An online store means the customer cannot see you, hear you or physically touch a product. They thus rely on information provided to help them assess the product and make up their minds on purchasing them. A detailed product description ensures a shopper fully understands the benefits of the product, how it works, and how they stand to gain by purchasing the product. Thus, it is essential to adequately write the product description and features, ensuring nothing is left out and every detail is correctly captured to reduce shopping cart abandonment inventory effects. This example has a detailed description and includes more information on other tabs:

(Image Credit: Neil Patel)

You should not just focus on what the product does but utilize this chance to persuade the shopper why they need to purchase the product and how it will make their life easy or better. Once a shopper sees the need to have a product or the value the product has to offer, they are likely to finish their purchase. Remember, you are not there to convince them; thus, providing accurate, detailed descriptions and information is likely to do the trick and increase your traffic.

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Save the cart

Online shoppers are continually multitasking and may not complete a purchase product immediately. However, allowing them to return to the cart and saving their products enable you to reduce shopping cart abandonment and close the sale. It also saves the shopper time, making your store not only easy to navigate but ideal for future purchases. For example:

(Image Credit: Caravan Beads)

You can use the saved cart details to analyze the shoppers purchasing patterns, provide discounts and coupons to motivate them to buy or use cookies and remember logins to ensure easy and quick access to where they left. You can also utilize different SEO tools to send notifications to shoppers or carry out target marketing to direct them back to the page and enable them to purchase. Using pop-ups reminders allows shoppers to quickly come back to the page and eases the buying process.

Make getting in touch easy

Unlike physical stores, e-commerce stores are opened to the public at all times as they can access the information at any time. Thus, your response should be prompt and pay attention to the different time zones to ensure shoppers do not feel neglected. Shoppers should be able to reach you with their questions, inquiries, and suggestions as this gives them confidence in your services and enables them to proceed to check out reducing the shopping cart abandonment inventory effects and numbers.

E-commerce should thus focus on having different ways shoppers can get in touch with their teams, such as emails, live chats, phone numbers they can call and message hotlines, and Facebook chats, among other mediums. Having a prompt feedback mechanism allows the store to answer shoppers’ questions and direct them ensuring an increase in sales. Clients may reach you to help them with the payment options or confirm shipment details that are two key areas that make most clients leave products on the cart area; thus, having prompt feedback ensures such issues are solved, and they can proceed to check out with no hiccups. Here are two examples of a helpful live chat option:

Add social proof

Social proof is a big motivator for potential and future shoppers. Having written testimonials from previous users enable you to build confidence on the site and attract more shoppers. Ask for consent from shoppers satisfied with your service to use their feedback on your website and ensure their experience is read by other people who seek your services. 

Social proof helps convince shoppers who are on the fence and eliminate their doubts, allowing them to make a decision. You can add social proof by listing testimonials on your site’s landing pages, getting product reviews from clients, and using applications that notify your clients who else is purchasing the product. Engage public figures who use your website to write product reviews, as this is likely to entice their followers to visit your page.

Build trust in your eCommerce store

The last thing you need in an eCommerce store is shoppers complaining of missed calls, unresponded emails, or suspicious behavior. An eCommerce shop’s success is built solely on trust; thus, every shop owner should work hard to ensure customer complaints are promptly resolved. Any misunderstanding reviewed to ensure customer satisfaction and reduce online shopping cart abandonment. You build trust by keeping clients happy and ensuring the product description and reviews are accurate. 

The last thing you need is a customer returning products because of the wrong description as this erodes trust and discourages them from using your platform again. You can also build trust by offering guarantees and warranties as clients feel more at ease to purchase a product when they have a fully detailed return policy that allows them to exchange the product or get a refund in case of discrepancies or damage during the shipping process.

Offer multiple payment options

Many online shopping cart abandonment effects are attributed to limited payment options that hinder the shopper from paying for the product. Ensure you have a wide variety of payment options that vary from credit and debit cards, cash cards, mobile wallets, and PayPal, among others. E-commerce stores attract shoppers from across the world, thus having a wide variety of payment options increases your chances of having options that work in different states and countries, enabling clients to finish their purchase. Take a look at all the payment options Home Depot has provided:

A variety of card options also allows shoppers to choose the option they comfortably understand and know how to use, allowing you to tap into a broader market. It is thus essential to invest in a payment structure that not only accepts a variety of cards but is prompt and fast to enable clients to receive notifications immediately they pay to ensure the payment reflects immediately. Eliminating wait time reduces cancellation and encourages clients to buy products from your store continually.

Use captivating visuals

Since clients cannot see or touch the products, they are purchasing, having captivating visuals allows the shoppers to see the product from all angles and entices them to purchase the product. High precision and well-lit visuals provide a chance for the shopper to analyze the product. Ensure you provide enough visuals to help clients see the product accurately and make an informed decision. Ensure your visuals have measurement details and capacity to help them develop a mental image of the product and reduce complaints received from the negative perception.

Boost the website speed

A website loading time is a make or break deal for most shoppers. Slow home page and check out page increases cart abandonment as shoppers get tired of waiting for the site. Most shoppers are also interested in how fast they can see what they want and buy it; thus, slow pages are likely to scare them away. The eCommerce world is filled with individuals who want things immediately; thus, one needs to up their game to ensure clients are satisfied with the website speed. You can invest in online tools that help improve a website loading period and work with experts to develop an efficient website that provides an excellent experience to the shoppers. 

You can also use SEO tools to carry out remarketing and ensure clients continually get cookies, pop-ups, and targeted messages on the cart box’s products. Remarketing plays a significant role in continually reminding the client of the product in the cart section, increasing their chances of coming back to close the sale. It is also a tool that enables you to get a second chance with clients who left the site due to long loading time and could not correctly analyze a product or decide on the product they wanted. You can use Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool to check your website speed and figure out what you need to fix, here is an example:

(Image Credit: Search Engine Land)

Offer personal outreach services

Different issues may cause cart abandonment; thus, reaching out to clients enables you to understand their actions and offer help where needed. Some shoppers experience a challenge navigating the site or the payment process, making them abandon products. Talking to such clients provides you with an opportunity to guide them through the payment process and enable them to complete the purchase. Others may not be familiar with the usage of online payment and do not have a guide. Personally reaching out to such individuals not only provides a chance to close the deal but opens the door to more business form the individual who not only feels taken care of but gets the information they require to make them shop online often.

Personal outreach also helps an eCommerce store identify its loopholes and analyze its website from a shopper’s perspective, granting them direct feedback to make the site better. You get to hear customer complaints and frustrations, giving you a chance to understand what they find exciting and their challenges. This act helps in the improvement of the website as you know what exactly needs targeting and improvements. Shoppers are also likely to come back to stores that provided them with personalized service and act as a brand ambassador of the service they received. Personalized outreach thus goes a long way in improving your service delivery improving traffic to the store.

Streamline the shipping process

Please pay attention to the shipping process and ensure shoppers get their products promptly. Most shoppers leave products in the cart area due to shipping costs or time that discourages them and leads to negative shopping cart abandonment effects. Ensure you offer shipping services that make the shoppers want to stick to the page. If you are charging for shipping costs, minimize the shipping time to make the client see the need to pay the shipping cost. 

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Some shoppers would rather pay a fee to get their products faster or delivered immediately; such incentives remove the focus from shipping costs and shift it to faster delivery. You can also utilize various incentives like providing free shipping for shoppers who spend a particular amount or in a specific geographical zone. These incentives go a long way in convincing shoppers and reduce cart abandonment. 

Lastly, you should focus on the shipping process and make it easy. Ensure shoppers can track their product and know where exactly they are, work with shipping companies that properly handle products to reduce breakages or damage during transit that causes a loss to the business. Have agreements with shipping companies and use those that handle the products well. You can also provide refunds or send other products to shoppers who receive damaged goods to build trust and encourage them to come back in the future.

Diib®: Targeted Traffic can Slow Shopping Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment is a significant issue affecting e-commerce. Learning how to handle shoppers’ questions and needs plays a significant role in reducing cart abandonment experienced by an eCommerce store. You should also invest in top-notch customer service to reduce abandonment cases. Diib Digital offers customized statistics that help you to understand your customers, their habits and ways to reduce abandonment. Here are some of the features we’re sure you’ll appreciate:

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