How to reduce the number of abandoned carts occurring in your ecommerce store?

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What is shopping cart abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment refers to a situation when a prospective customer starts the checkout process for an online order. They are willing to make the purchase, but decide not to proceed before completing the transaction. In other words, there is an item in the shopping cart that never makes it through the transaction. Therefore, it is considered to be abandoned by the shopper. There may be many reasons why shoppers might be leaving their cart on your website.
The Cart abandonment rate is one of the most critical metrics for e-commerce brands to gauge the success of their stores. In addition, the shopping cart abandonment rate can help you identify hidden challenges on the path to purchase. For example, if your CAR (Cart Abandonment Rate) goes up, that is an indication that something is going wrong.

How do you calculate the Cart abandonment rate (CAR)?

Count the total number of completed purchases. Divide this by the total number of created shopping carts. Subtract the result from 1 and then multiply by 100 to get the percentage.
1-(total number of purchases/ total number of created shopping carts)x 100
For example, if there are 7o complete purchases and 400 shopping carts created. The cart abandonment rate would be 82.5.
1-(70/400)x 100=82.5

A high cart abandonment rate indicates that somewhere across the customer journey, there is at least one poor experience or broken funnel.

When you are selling something, you want your customers to go through the funnel entirely and make the purchase. This blog post will throw light on several measures to reduce the number of abandoned carts to your eCommerce store.

Abandoned carts are the arch-enemy of conversions. Hence we must do some research to realize why people are leaving your store without completing a purchase.

There are many reasons why people generally abandon carts.

• Around 20% of customers complain that the checkout process from the cart to making the payment is very slow
• 27% of the surveyed people complained that they did not want to sign up for an account with a store. They want to check out as a guest or purchase independently, but they cannot do so. They had to sign up to make a purchase. Hence they abandoned the cart
• 50% of the people did not know about the shipping fee and the taxes before going through to the checkout. Hence they pulled out at the last minute. If you are charging too much for shipping, especially if they came to buy a 20-25 dollar item and charge 8 dollars to ship it, they are not likely to make the purchase
• 37% of the people said that they were merely browsing

Other reasons provided were:

• Complicated navigation
• The site crashed
• The customers were concerned about website security.

Let us look at some tactics that can help you reduce shopping cart abandonment so that we can mitigate these percentages:

1. Use exit-intent popups

Exit-intent popups appear when your customer moves his mouse up to the edge of the screen to open up a new website or close the entire window. You have a little popup that comes up and says, “Hey, don’t go just yet” You can use this space for a few different things.
You can make a coupon or a discount code and give it to your customer just there. You know that they are going anyway. Hence you are going to get 100% less profit. It would be wise to give them some discount here that prompts them to complete the checkout process.
You can also utilize this space to showcase your brand through imagery and a short video. Hence that little space is very important because you can get your user’s attention at the exact moment when they are about to abandon your cart.

2. State your shipping cart policies clearly.

The first step to converting abandoned shopping carts into sales is to clearly state your shipping policies. Make it easy for your customers to determine how much shipping it would cost them. For example, 30% of abandoned carts are due to shipping fees. Hence if you clearly state your policies upfront and put them out there for people, they are more likely to purchase from you.

3. Do not make your customers create a customer account.

Forcing your customers to create a customer account adds an extra step in getting to the checkout screen. Many customers find this quite annoying. Hence allow the checkout process to be as seamless as possible. Allow them to use guest checkout or no account at all. You will have plenty of time to reach back to these customers and ask them to create an account with you at their leisure.

4. Offer multiple payment methods.

Make it easy to pay and offer multiple payment methods so that your customers can choose the most suitable one. Display the different credit card logos and payment methods to automatically know that they can use their preferred means of payment.

5. Easy navigation

Make sure that the shopping cart has a clear and easy-to-navigate display of products. People want something that will allow them to be efficient in their transactions. So use the best pictures, lay them out nicely, and provide a product description. You can also put videos to demonstrate your product.

6. Win the trust of customers

Use security logos and compliance information to earn the confidence and trust of consumers. You might also put a secure HTTPS in your browser. Show testimonials, ratings, and feedback from customers. Statistics show that testimonials drive 50% of buying decisions. It is no coincidence that they are all over amazon.com, and purchases increase by 55% when products have a higher rating.

7. Create urgency

People abandon carts for a reason, and many times the reason is that there is no urgency. They often think they might come back to the cart later because they have time or maybe on the wrong device. Push them to take some action now. You can do this in multiple ways:

Let them know that you are running out of stock and cannot guarantee the supply of the product at a later date.

People, in general, are loss-averse. Hence you want to make them feel the possibility of a loss.

8. Live chatbox

You must include a live chat box with CSR Skype contact details or an active Twitter account to assist shoppers with any concerns they may have. If the business demonstrates readiness to provide a solution, customers will stay and make their purchases. Make editing the cart a breeze because people change their minds all the time when they are shopping.

9. Provide more clarity on the price, guarantee, and subscription renewal

Provide more clarity on the price and any warranties that you are offering. If it was a subscribed product, then provide more clarity as to when they will be renewing the subscription.

10. Include Product thumbnail images Of the product

Including thumbnail images of the product has a psychological effect on the customers. When you are shopping in a physical store, you have the products in front of you, but it is not so in the case of eCommerce. People tend to forget what they are buying when they are shopping around online. Showing a product’s thumbnail image to the customers added to the cart is like telling them what they are buying.

11. Offer money-back guarantee

Offer a money-back guarantee or any assurances to your customers. Online shoppers cannot see, feel or touch what they are buying. They can only see the pictures that you are putting on your website. Hence there is always a trust factor involved when you purchase online. Offering a money-back guarantee or assurance can reduce the customers’ fear and help them complete the checkout process.

12. Incentives based on cart total

You create incentives based on how much the customer has in his cart. For example, let us assume that a customer has 50 dollars for all the products in his cart, you can offer a 10% discount, and if he has 70, you can offer a 15% discount. This way, you can encourage the customers to finalize their purchase as soon as possible.

You cannot eliminate shopping cart abandonment. It is going to happen. But following the measures can double the chances of making sales. To find out how you can double your online conversion rate, get in touch with Karma to learn more.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]