An abandoned cart is costing you money. If you want to grow your business, you can't afford that. Research shows that e-commerce businesses see an average 69.57 percent abandon rate. That is a scary statistic. It means that roughly two out of three shoppers decide to leave your site in the middle of checking out. You can estimate how much money you're losing. Luckily, you can do something to cut down on abandoned carts.
If you want to reduce the occurrence of an abandoned cart, these three topics are the ones you need to know about:
Learning more about why people abandon carts will help you avoid it. Once you know the causes, it will be easier to address abandoned cart issues. Baymard Institute conducted research on e-commerce and identified many reasons why people abandon carts:
Note that shoppers could have more than one reason to leave a cart. Now, let's look at those statistics in categories that will help you take action.
Some shoppers might think the checkout process will take too long or is too complicated. That will cause 26 percent to leave your cart. If the checkout process requires shoppers to create an account, 34 percent will leave. Four percent of shoppers leave because the system declines their credit card. We're assuming that problem isn't a result of the checkout process.
In summary, a less than stellar checkout process can cost you 60 percent of your shoppers.
Twenty-one percent of shoppers abandon a cart because they can't see the total cost up front. Fees cause 55 percent of shoppers to leave. They think fees make the total too expensive. Those fees could include things such as shipping, handling, and tax.
Some shoppers leave because they don't find their preferred payment option. That reason forces 6 percent of shoppers to stop checking out.
In summary, if you're not managing the cost and payment issues in your cart, you're losing 61 percent of your shoppers.
It's difficult for a shopper to establish trust if your website looks unprofessional. If the website has errors or crashes during checkout, that's another problem. Together, those issues will result in 17 percent of shoppers leaving. Some shoppers won't trust your website to protect their credit cards. That will drive off another 17 percent of shoppers.
In summary, if your website isn't impressive, you'll lose 34 percent of your shoppers.
Shopping online can be a risk. The shopper can't touch or try on the product if it's clothing. Besides that, they can't check the color or confirm the quality of the product before making the purchase. Once the shopper has received the product, they may find that it's not what they wanted. In that case, the shopper will want an easy way to process a return. If your site doesn't have a good return policy, 11 percent of your shoppers will leave.
Online shoppers today want things fast. If your delivery methods are too slow, 16 percent of shoppers will leave your cart.
In summary, you'll lose 27 percent of shoppers if your policies aren't popular.
The best way to reduce abandoned cart problems is to avoid them in the first place. These strategies can help you create a great online experience for your shoppers. Shoppers will stay on your website when you make shopping easy.
Baymard research shows that over time, the average number of checkout steps has increased to 5.42. Most carts have six steps. If you can reduce the number of steps in your checkout, you'll have an advantage. But even more important is what the shopper must do at each step.
According to Baymard, an average checkout has almost 15 form fields. Shoppers can get overwhelmed when they see a large number of fields on a checkout page. Overwhelmed shoppers often leave carts. Here are four suggestions for reducing the number of fields on your form.
It would be great if every shopper created an account to make them feel like a member of the family. But creating an account slows down the checkout process. It also annoys people who don't want to create an account.
Offer a guest checkout option at the beginning of the checkout process. You can always offer the chance to create an account after the shopper completes their purchase.
Some shoppers prefer to use PayPal or another third-party processor. Others would prefer to use a credit card. The more payment options you can provide, the fewer abandoned carts you'll have.
It's frustrating for a shopper to fill out billing information before they know what the purchase will cost. Show shipping costs in the cart, if there are any. If your shipping fee calculation requires a zip code, ask for it in the cart to display shipping costs before the checkout process begins. You can also include taxes and any other fees in the cart total.
Several factors will determine whether shoppers trust you and your website. Here are ideas for establishing trust with your customers.
Offering quick delivery sounds easy. But there are two issues you need to address:
Returns are a fact of life for almost all e-commerce companies. It's virtually impossible for a shopper to make the right choices in every online order. According to UPS, 68 percent of online shoppers review a website's return policy before buying anything. And 15 percent of shoppers abandon a cart when the return policy isn't clear.
Your customers will have more confidence in your company and products if you have an attractive return policy. So, make it easy for shoppers to find your return policy. Don't hide it on a Customer Service page. Make it easy to find, along with your shipping policy.
You can't make a policy that will cost you money, but it needs to be useful enough for the shopper to make it effective. For example, L.L. Bean finally dropped its lifetime guarantee in 2018. It was costing the company more than it was making from its famous boot. L.L. Bean revised its guarantee to one-year, which is still better than many of its competitors'.
Technology can help you determine when a shopper is about to abandon a cart. When that happens, it's your last chance to get them to check out while they're on your website. Use exit-intent popups to make shoppers think twice about leaving. The most effective popups offer a discount or free shipping to get the shopper to commit to the purchase.
Despite all your efforts, shoppers are going to abandon carts on your website. Here are strategies that will help you recover those sales after the shopper has left your website.
After a shopper abandons a cart, sending an email can help entice the shopper back to complete their purchase. Here are some tips for writing abandoned cart emails.
A web push notification is a message that you can send to visitors to your website. It appears on their desktop or mobile device, even if your web page isn't open in their browser. Web push notifications offer several benefits:
Some people don't value push notifications. They think that no one will opt-in to receive them. Actually, the opt-in rate is about 5-15 percent. Email newsletter opt-in rates run around 2 percent. The higher opt-in for notifications could be because people are more comfortable when they don't need to supply their personal information. In addition, notifications average an engagement rate of 21 percent. That is much better than the average rate for email, which is 3 percent.
You will need to optimize your notifications to get the best result. Make sure your copywriting is top notch. You have a limited amount of space in a notification and need to grab attention quickly. Push notifications are a perfect follow-up to an abandoned cart.
Use some of the strategies that work for abandoned cart emails. Promote the bestselling items in the cart -- and use scarcity, social proof, and special offers to motivate the shopper to return to complete their purchase.
You can use retargeting ads to remind shoppers of the items they left in their abandoned cart. One way to retarget is to use Google AdWords. Google will show ads for the items in an abandoned cart to your shopper on other websites they visit. Retargeting on Facebook and Instagram is also available.
You can use your traffic analytics to identify and fix places where you're losing shoppers. Your shoppers go through several steps before they reach your shopping cart. You could lose shoppers anywhere along that journey. Knowing when shoppers are leaving, especially at the critical cart stage, will help you optimize your funnel. Improving your funnel can help you reduce the number of abandoned carts you need to worry about getting back.
An abandoned cart is an opportunity lost. Too many losses will hurt your chances to grow your business. When a shopper has identified items they'd like to buy, they've made a commitment of time and thought. It's much easier to bring that shopper back to your website than it is to attract a new shopper.
Use the right strategies to stop shoppers from leaving, and to entice them back after they're gone. You'll be in a much better position to increase sales and achieve long-term growth when those strategies are working well for you.
Eniture Technology specializes in helping e-Commerce merchants grow by providing useful information, digital marketing services, off-the-shelf apps that solve common problems, and custom programming services. Please contact us if you need help growing your online business or implementing the concepts presented in this blog post.
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