How To Reduce Abandoned Shopping Carts?
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Globally, as of the end of 2017, an average of 69.23% of shopping carts were abandoned. Essentially, that means that only three out of ten customers will typically go on ton actually pay for their products. Shopping cart abandoned by a customer is literally a lost sale.
How can you reduce the number of shopping cart abandoned by customers?
That’s what this post will deal with.
Why Do Customers Abandon Their Carts?
According to Statista, the primary reason that people abandon their carts in the United States is that shipping costs too much. If we compare stats and user data like MarketingGeeks have, we will realize quickly that issues about shipping do come up quite a lot. Of all the issues raised, three relate directly to the site and are things that you can work on.
Unaware Of The Shipping Cost
24% of shoppers cited hidden shipping cost as the reason that they backed off. This is a simple issue to deal with if the site has been well designed. The cost of shipping should be indicated right by the price. Alternatively, make a note that the cost of shipping will depend on the shipping method chosen.
This way, the customer wouldn’t have a nasty surprise when she goes to pay for her item.
Long Process
21% of shoppers abandon the sale if the checkout process takes too long. This is one of the main issues on an ecommerce website that cause shopping cart abandonment. From a practical standpoint, you want to make the sale as quickly and easy for the customer as possible. Every time she has to pause to wait for the page to load is another opportunity for her to rethink her purchase. Every form that has be filled in increases the chance of abandonment too.
Take a note from Amazon on this one—use a one-click payment method wherever possible. It might only save a few seconds, but every second counts online.
And don’t worry about having to figure out the coding to make that happen either, as CS-Cart has already designed the best possible solution. It is a very cleverly designed ecommerce store builder. One click purchases are only one of the many features.
Back to basics—make it as simple for them to complete their payment as possible. Only ask for the data that you must have to help streamline the process and consider allowing buyers to shop without singing in first.
Bad Site Navigation
16% of shoppers feel that if the site is difficult to navigate, they would certainly abandon the sale and you get one more abandoned cart. Again, the solution here is simple—make things as easy for your customer as you can. That means creating a navigation menu that is crystal clear and making sure it appears on every page.
Also make sure that the cart appears on every page. That way, whenever they are ready, all they need to do is to click on it. From there, they can confirm the order and pay. If they have to look for the cart or search for the checkout, your odds of losing the sale go up substantially.
In some cases, like when the customer changes her mind or is “doing research,” there is little you can do to recover the sale. However, by ensuring that you have a super-slick website that loads fast, works flawlessly, and is very user friendly, you improve the customer experience.
Increase the odds in your favour today by doing a complete site audit and see what you might need to do differently. This way a shopping cart abandoned by a client will no more be a problem on your eCommerce website.
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Yan Anderson is the Head of Content Marketing at CS-Cart with over 10 years of experience in the eCommerce industry. He's passionate about explaining complicated things in simple terms. Yan has expertise in building, running and growing eCommerce marketplaces. He loves to educate people about best practices, new technologies, and trends in the global eCommerce industry.