At least one cart is being abandoned by an online shopper each year resulting in a continuous rise in the number of online orphans or abandoned online carts. Although cart abandonment is seriously alarming, it can be prevented.
According to Listrak, today’s cart abandonment rate is at an alarming 80% with a 77% average rate for the past six months. From February to August 2016, the rate of online shopping cart abandonment has increased from 74.89% to 80.15%.
In 2015, the average cart abandonment rate was 71.39% globally, reports Barilliance, the leader in cart abandonment recovery technologies. Cart abandonment rates by device are as follows: 76% on mobile phones, 75% on tablets, and 69% on desktops.
Ever since e-commerce started making its way in the shopping industry, cart abandonment remains to be one of the major challenges online retailers needs to face and eventually overcome. What can we do to change the future of our e-stores then?
About Cart Abandonment
What exactly is shopping cart abandonment? This great challenge faced by e-commerce retailers happen when online shoppers place items in their digital shopping carts, but then leave or abandon their carts before completing their purchase.
To compute for your e-commerce shop’s cart abandonment rate, just divide the total number of successfully completed transactions by the total number of initiated transactions. Your shop’s cart abandonment rate identifies the percentage of online shoppers who intended to add items to their carts and make purchases but didn’t proceed to checkout.
How This Can Be Avoided
Even though the data for cart abandonment is sobering and challenging, with the right strategy, it can be avoided. Here are different ways to get your shoppers stay until completing their orders and reduce your shop’s cart abandonment rate:
- Establish and build trust and security.
In e-commerce, your customers are required to give out some of their personal information such as contact numbers, shipping address, and credit card details during payment. To give them confidence and security, show them your trust logos and licenses.
According to statistics, 75.66% of online shoppers say that trust logos affect their sense of trust for a specific website. More than that, 60.96% of online shoppers didn’t complete their purchase because of missing trust logos or logos they don’t recognize.
- Be clear about shipping costs upfront.
Most consumers abandon their carts because of unexpected hidden costs that surprise them upon checkout. Of all these hidden costs, fees, and surcharges, the shipping cost is the top reason for shopping cart abandonment. Besides hating to pay for shipping fees, not stating the shipping costs upfront pisses potential customers the most.
Even before a customer adds a product in the cart, state the shipping fee upfront. You can add it to the product page so they’ll know how much the exact cost will be.
- If possible, offer free shipping.
According to statistics, 93% of online shoppers get encouraged to buy more products in an online store where free shipping is offered. If it’s feasible and possible, offer your online customers with free shipping. Doing this will attract more leads and sales.
- Provide guest checkout options.
Another reason why online shoppers abandon their carts is that of being forced to log in or create an account with an online store. To reduce your shop’s cart abandonment rate, make sure you provide your customers with guest checkout options.
Doing this may require sacrificing their email or other data, but a guest checkout option will give you the sweet rewards of a complete purchase. The choice is yours.
- Provide a variety of payment options.
Offering an only credit card payment option or few choices can increase your online shop’s cart abandonment rate. Today, shoppers are most likely to abandon your cart if your available payment options do not include their preferred method or gateway.
To reduce your online shop’s cart abandonment rate, you might also want to consider adding mobile payment options such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet to cater to the younger generation of online shoppers. More options = less abandoned carts.
- Make the checkout process simple.
Never bombard your customers with too many input fields to fill out in a checkout form. For the majority of online shoppers, complex checkout forms are time-consuming, so they just abandon their carts and look for another online store to shop instead.
In creating forms, especially for checkout, keep it short and simple. Refrain from asking unnecessary information in your checkout form. You also need to watch out for redundant or duplicate fields. Provide a hassle-free checkout process as possible.
- Include thumbnail images of their orders.
To give your customers an experience like that of shopping in a physical store, include thumbnail images of their orders in their shopping bag or cart. This is an effective “grounding” technique that will remind them of the items they’re purchasing.
With the help of thumbnails, your customers can easily check, edit, or update their orders. They can easily see the products they’re buying throughout the checkout process. Seeing the thumbnail images of their chosen items will reinforce their desire to buy.
- Use clear and compelling CTAs.
When customers add an item to their shopping cart, there’s still no assurance that it will eventually lead to a sale. For that reason, you still need to woo your customers to complete their purchase during their entire shopping experience or upon checkout.
It’s a must to include clear and compelling calls to action (CTAs) on the customer’s cart or the checkout page to strengthen their resolve to complete their purchase. Remember, your goal is to completely convert a lead to a sale, not an abandoned cart.
Online retailers lose billions of dollars yearly due to abandoned shopping carts. To prevent or at least lessen this loss in sales, do what it takes to encourage your customers to complete their purchase, rather than simply leave their carts and walk away from your online shop.
Don’t contribute to the growing number of online orphans in the world of online shopping. Give your customers a simple, seamless, and hassle-free online shopping experience. Consider the tips enumerated above and reduce your e-commerce store’s cart abandonment rate.
