Reducing Cart Abandonment

A lot of time and effort goes into getting visitors to your site. As an eCommerce business, your main goal is to turn those visits into sales, but as we all know, it’s a lot easier said than done. It can be disheartening to see the statistics behind your cart abandonment – how many potential customers decide against their purchase at the very last hurdle – which is why it’s important to do what it takes to change those statistics.

Why Do Customers Abandon Their Carts?

There are many reasons why customers might decide against their purchase at the last minute, and unfortunately, there’s no definitive way to understand why. However, through surveys and theoretical guesswork, here are the most popular reasons and what you can do to minimise them.

Hidden Costs

Nobody likes to get to the last step of their order to realise they have to pay extra, unexpected costs on top of what was initially stated. These could include general shipping costs or processing fees. Unfortunately, customers have become spoilt by the free shipping methods offered by larger companies, meaning they sometimes don’t expect to encounter a shipping cost when processing their order. It can be difficult if you’re a small eCommerce business to forfeit the shipping fees. However, there are ways around it.

It can be a good solution to put up free shipping for a limited time period so that you will see an increase in sales during this time. You can also offer free or discounted shipping codes to loyal customers or members or just create a minimum order threshold that encourages customers to make larger purchases.  The important thing is to be transparent – let your customers know in advance what costs to expect so it doesn’t throw them off at the last minute.

Just Browsing

Everyone likes to browse, and the majority of the time, we do it with the intention to buy, but all it takes is a small obstacle to make our motivation/desire for that produce, fade. In this case, you need to bring back that temptation to the customer. This could be done by setting up retargeted ads or cart recovery emails to remind that potential customers of what they previously wanted. It’s also a good idea to set up a wishlist option, as sometimes customers will browse with the intention of purchasing at a later date, like their payday.

Too long of a process

Try to avoid any compulsory registrations. Allow the customer to be able to checkout as a guest and not have too many steps ahead of the final purchasing page. By allowing various payment options, you’re also giving them plenty of opportunities to pay. Payments by PayPal for example, don’t require that individual to sort through their purse/wallet looking for their bank card – something that might put them off making that purchase. Quite simply, the easier to buy, the better.

Making these few small changes could make a huge difference to the number of abandoned carts you experience. Though it can be tricky to pinpoint exactly what is the driving force behind a potential customer quitting before their purchase, the above examples are cited as the most popular reasons. It’s doubtful businesses will ever be able to avoid cart abandonment completely, but there will always be some customers you can win back.

If you would like more information on cart abandonment, or how to improve your sales within your eCommerce business, marketing agency 5874 can offer marketing support, content creation and web design and development. Contact us right here for more.