Online shopping cart abandonment is a big problem. According to Baymard Institute
from a round-up of 37 studies, 69.23% of shopping carts are abandoned before the
customer completes the sale. This means you’re only selling about one-third of what
you could be selling.
To help you increase your sales this holiday season, here are the top 4 reasons people
abandon their shopping cart and what you can do about it.
1) Unexpected shipping charges – Twenty-eight percent of shoppers will
abandon their shopping cart when presented with unexpected shipping costs. It’s
not that people don’t want to pay for shipping. It’s when people are presented
with something they didn’t expect to pay, they get a negative feeling and leave.
What to do about it: Tell people upfront about your shipping charges. For
example, at the start of your sales funnel, say, “You’re going to have to pay some
extra shipping charges because this is an oversized item.” Or whatever the
reason is. Another thing you can do is provide a “calculate shipping charges”
feature in the shopping cart. Even if they don’t use the feature, they will expect to
pay something for shipping.
2) Being forced to create a user account. I get it. You want to capture buyers’
information and continue to market to them. But forcing people to create a user
account will ruin your chances of converting 23% of users. I’ve even seen sites
where you can’t shop unless you hand over an email address, which is
ridiculous. How do you know if you like their stuff if you can’t even look at it?
Some people just want to buy stuff and don’t want to create a user account.
What to do about it: Rather than refusing to serve customers who don’t want to
create an account, provide a guest option. For example, an effective checkout
I’ve seen is where before you go to checkout, three options are provided: 1) a
Member checkout 2) Guest checkout, 3) PayPal checkout (or Pay by Amazon is
another great option.)
3) Unsure about the product or service. If a user doesn’t have experience buying
from you, they may get cold feet during the check-out period.
What to do about it: Fifty-five percent of shoppers find customer reviews
important when making a buying decision. So, if you want to dramatically
influence your conversion rates, include customer-generated reviews and ratings.
This is a transparent way for a customer to see you have satisfied customers. A
good example of this is on Amazon.
As a bonus, review-related search queries are high in volume and very high in
click-thru rates and conversions.
4) People are unsure about website & transaction security. Now more than ever
people worry about whether their credit card and personal information are safe.
What to do about it: There are several measures you can take.
You can change your buy buttons to read “Secure Checkout” and change
the wording next to your credit card fields to read “Secure credit card
checkout.”
Add the logos of the major credit card and third-party payment methods to
your form.
Add your phone number with the words, “Need Help?” next to your form.
This gives people security that you are a real company and makes them
feel better that they can someone if they run into trouble.
Give clear instruction on what is needed and expected each step of the
way. For example, if the phone number needs to be typed in as
4445556666 instead of 444-555-6666, tell them. This helps avoid errors
and frustration.
Add something familiar and credible. For example, the new “Pay with
Amazon” button lets people make a purchase from you with just one click.
All fields are auto-populated and the familiar orange and blue Amazon
button help make it easier while making people feel more secure.
Keep your SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate up-to-date. The SSL
certificate authenticates the identity of a website and encrypts information
sent to the server. Consumers have been trained to look for “https” as a
signal that the site is safe and secure while “http” is an indication the site
isn’t secure. Make a yearly event on your calendar to remind yourself to
update your certificate to keep everything running smoothly.
Three Ways to Get People Back to their Abandoned Shopping Carts
It may not be possible to persuade all of the shoppers who abandoned your shopping
cart to return, but there are a few ways to recover sales that have proven effective.
Send an abandoned cart email – According to SalesCycle, when you send an
“abandoned cart email” to people who have added items to their cart but failed to check
out, nearly half will open that email and one third of the clicks will lead to purchases
back on your site.
Offer a discount on items left in their abandoned cart – Fifty-four percent of
shoppers will purchase products they left in a shopping cart if those products are offered
at a lower price.
Use Re-targeting –Seventy-two percent of millennial shoppers respond favorably to re-
targeting. (Re-targeting is showing users ads to bring them back to your site after
they’ve abandoned it). In fact, re-targeting is one of the most powerful and effective
forms of marketing and can create higher ROI, greater customer retention, easier new
customer acquisition, a way to convert old customers to come back, and higher
customer spend rates.
The first step to recovering abandoned shopping carts is to understand the reasons why
customers leave without completing the sale. Use this list as a guide and then
implement the solutions provided above to build trust and complete more transactions
this holiday season and beyond.