If you’re running an eCommerce store, then shopping cart abandonment rates are probably the reason you’re staying up at night. It is frustrating to wonder why a customer would leave without purchasing and clearly show interest in your products by adding them to their cart?
However, you’re not alone. Almost 70% of shoppers abandon their carts even after adding multiple products they liked from your website.
So, despite spending hundreds on getting visitors to your platform, you’re not making any money.
You’ll have to take many difficult measures to decrease shopping cart abandonment, from providing free shipping to eliminating account-creation requirements. However, here are the ten steps you can take to start converting maximum visitors.
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1. Monitor Your Cart Abandonment Rates
Before taking any measures to reduce your cart abandonment rates, it is essential to determine the frequency of the occurrence in your store. We know what you’re thinking. How much is cart abandonment too much abandonment?
Well, as mentioned, cart abandonment is a global eCommerce issue, and 70% of all carts have this fate. But, to put things into perspective, only thirty of them pay for your merchandise for every hundred customers who add your products to their carts.
But, due to various reasons such as complex user interface, high shipping costs, lack of payment options, and complicated checkout processes, this rate can go higher for your brand.
It is important to gauge your cart abandonment situation accurately before taking corrective measures to solve the problem. Tools such as Google Analytics can help you track these rates and even figure out the common reasons customers abandon their carts.
Similarly, if you are already applying corrective measures such as discount offers or exit-intent pop-ups, monitoring your progress is equally important. You can see whether you are getting significant ROI through your strategies through these metrics.
Using this information, you can ditch the techniques which aren’t working for you and adapt new ones to convert more customers and increase sales.
2. Use Exit-Intent Popups
Remember, a person who visits your website and interacts with your products already likes your brand and merchandise. So, there’s probably an external reason stopping them from making a purchase.
Your next step, in this case, should be simple, just remove the obstacle that’s stopping them from clicking that buy button. But, how to do that? That’s where exit-intent pop-ups come in.
This technology works by tracking the cursor movements of your prospects to detect when they are leaving your website. Then, immediately, the AI technology triggers a full-screen pop-up notification.
The main intention of this pop-up is to grab a two to the three-second margin for you to convince the visitor again before they take off. With tools such as Tada, you can integrate personalized exit-intent pop-ups that offer clear incentives to your customers and blend easily with your brand’s outlook.
Giving you a second chance to pitch to the customer, these pop-ups make them rethink their decision and stay on your website for longer than they originally intended. So, even if they don’t complete their purchase right away, they will provide their contact details if your offer is enticing enough to facilitate targeted remarketing in the future. Moreover, exit-intent technology also lets you track a person’s activity to provide segmentized incentives. For example, you can offer free shipping or a discount coupon to make them change their mind and complete the checkout process right away.
3. Remind Your Visitors of Their Cart’s Contents
Unless they are on a serious shopping spree, most customers only add two to three products into their carts, so they are not likely to forget what they added. However, integrating a cart reminder on your homepage can constantly remind them of the stuff they liked.
Similarly, providing easy access to their cart from any page of your website eases the checkout process for your visitors and lets them navigate towards it effortlessly.
Besides that, when shopping online, most customers check and recheck their carts to ensure they haven’t made any mistakes. Let’s face it; no one wants to go through the hassle of managing product exchanges and claims. So, adding an accessible cart reminder can let them check to see if they have added the right color, size, or material into their carts.
Ultimately, this eases the checkout process while providing a visual reminder for completing their purchase. Furthermore, displaying a cart summary when the visitor initiates the checkout process is also a good practice to reduce cart abandonment. They can easily transit from their cart to shipping and billing without moving to another page to recheck their items.
4. Make Checkouts Accessible
Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think for a moment. You like the stuff you’ve added to your cart, but after clicking the buy button, you’re directed to shipping, billing, payment, and confirmation pages before leaving the website with an order receipt.
Sounds tedious? Customers probably feel the same way about complicated checkout processes and seldom complete their purchases unless they are genuinely interested.
Short attention spans combined with low endurance are perfect for cart abandonment due to complex checkouts. To avoid this, chop down your checkout process into two steps. Moreover, you can ease the task by applying effective UX techniques and removing roadblocks such as lengthy signup forms. Also, adding a progress bar and defining clear CTA is a great way to reduce complexity and decrease cart abandonment rates
5. Offer Cheap Shipping
You are selling a product on your eCommerce store, another version of which is readily available at nearby physical stores. Now, a customer will buy the product from your store because they can receive it at their doorstep.
But, if you charge a massive amount for delivering the product to their home, they would choose the nearby store to make their purchase. Let’s face it; high shipping rates are massive roadblocks for customers, even if they are genuinely interested in your products.
75% of shoppers admit that they abandon most online purchases because of high shipping rates. On the other hand, 44% opted out of a purchase because of the long delivery processing period.
The best way to remove this obstacle is by creating a free shipping threshold. It provides an incentive for customers to complete their purchase, but it also increases your average cart value. Additionally, give out loyalty points and promotions where your customers can get free shipping and get their products without any additional charge.
6. Create a Sense of Urgency
Every time a customer abandons their shopping cart, it is not necessarily because of a problem in your checkout system or product quality. Instead, simple procrastination is another crucial reason people forget to complete their purchases.
Look at it this way. Nobody likes to part with their money immediately, so most customers decide to take time to think it out before buying your product unless they’re purchasing essentials. So, how can you get them to click the buy button now without further thought rather than keep it for later?
The great idea is to create urgency around your product. You can do this by using countdown timers and exit-intent pop-ups as well. These pop-ups can display various speeds, such as the end of a discount offer, seasonal sale, or inventory stock.
Your customer should know that if they don’t make the purchase immediately, they might risk losing out on a profitable promotion or miss the product altogether. This urges hesitant buyers to instantly speed up their decision-making process and complete the checkout process.
7. Build Trust In Your Platform
Even if your products and services are attractive enough, most first-time customers don’t purchase because of trust issues. The best way to build trust is to provide social proof on your product pages.
Make sure every product they check out has testimonials and ratings from real customers to help build trust. Similarly, push notifications showing how other customers worldwide are interacting with your brand in real-time will also increase their chances of completing a purchase.
No matter how hard you try to advertise your product, witnessing other customers like them making a purchase is a massive push for first-time visitors.
Furthermore, another way to build trust is to add trust badges on your checkout forms. A checkout form is the most crucial section of the checkout process, and almost 61% of buyers leave if they don’t find any trust badges on the page. Adding a security logo such as ‘Norton Secured’ or ‘VeriSign Secured’ will make customers less hesitant about spending their hard-earned money on your website.
8. Facilitate Accessible Navigation
Customers are more likely to complete their purchase if they have a smooth, streamlined experience navigating from product pages to their cart until they reach the checkout forms. However, if they face multiple roadblocks along the way, they will most probably ditch the purchase altogether.
It is essential to simplify your store’s UX and make them accessible for customers to move between their favorite products and their cart. The easiest way to reduce friction during the checkout process is to eliminate the back button.
Suppose users want to view their cart from product pages or navigate towards other products after viewing one. In that case, they shouldn’t have to click ‘back.’ Instead, you can place shortcuts such as ‘recently viewed’ and ‘products you may like’ on every product page can help them add the products they liked quickly into their carts.
Similarly, easy access to their cart and checkout through intuitive navigation will also speed up the checkout process and help them complete their purchase.
9. Offer Multiple Payment Options
You’ve offered a fantastic product, provided a seamless UX to enrich your customer’s experience, and have them on the payment page. However, the customer finds out you don’t offer cash on delivery.
If you’re offering only one or very few payment options on your website, you’ll be forcing many willing customers to abandon their carts on your website. Therefore, apart from offering multiple credit card options, you should try to facilitate other payment modes such as Google Wallet, Apple Pay, and PayPal. This might be an additional expense and management obstacle for you as a business owner, but it will bring significant ROI in the long run.
10. Provide Reliable Assurances
Online stores are notorious for showing off unique products and delivering mediocre ones. While that might not be the case with your store, you cannot prove that to your customers until they make their first purchase.
A customer has various doubts and hesitations when it comes to clicking the buy button. Have I ordered the right size? Will the color look good on me? How will the material feel? The best way to convince them to complete their purchase, in this case, is to provide reliable assurances throughout the shopping experience.
For example, a no-questions-asked money-back guarantee or an easy return and exchange policy might help hesitant buyers make their decision quickly. This ensures them that the product will speak for itself, and even if it doesn’t, they can always claim it with you and avoid losing their money. If you trust your products, you can go the extra mile and be bold with your return and exchange policies. For example, provide free return shipping and doorstep pick-up so that your customers aren’t worried about going through any extra hassle if the product is not what it seems.
Final Words
Shopping cart abandonment is when a customer leaves your website without purchasing anything, even after showing interest in your products. In this case, you have successfully lured the customer in, but they failed to complete the process due to a roadblock on the way.
You can take specific measures to remove these roadblocks, such as providing free shipping, creating streamlined UX, and simplifying the checkout processes. Whichever strategy you apply, make sure it works for your target audience and matches your brand identity.
Remember, what works for other brands might not always work for you. Consider A/B testing to ensure the best results and significant ROI for your efforts.
Also read: What Is Gamification In Email Marketing? A Beginner Guide