Simple ways to reduce cart abandonment

When developing and launching your ecommerce business, one of the most prominent topics will be cart abandonment. Ensure you understand the reasons behind cart abandonment and what can be done to reduce this. To completely understand cart abandonment, it can be understood when those who are online shopping add their desired items to your businesses shopping cart, then leave your site before following through with the payment.

Overall, the average rate for cart abandonment during 2019 was 71.13%. This means three quarters of shoppers chose to leave the site before completing the purchase. Additionally, when looking at the global average the country with the highest rate was Spain with 86.15% and the country with the lowest were the Netherlands with a rate of 65.49%. Meanwhile, for Australia we are positioned directly in the middle with 74.64%. Cart abandonment also depends on the type of device being used. For example in 2015 the device with the highest rate of cart abandonment was mobile phones with 85.65%. In comparison to desktops which have an abandonment rate of 73.07%. So, how can you avoid cart abandonment? Here we are going to outline the top 7 reasons as to why cart abandonment happens in the first place.

1. Shipping costs and delivery times

Shipping is a major deal breaker for most shoppers. This is because 80% of shoppers revealed that free shipping is the main reason for shopping online. Ultimately, if shipping isn’t free customers will become less interested and potentially leave your site. The shipping time is also another incentive for shoppers to abandon their carts. This is because if their items are going to take too long they will look for quicker options.

2. Complicated or high pricing

If your customers cannot easily read and understand the pricing of what they are wishing to purchase, 23% are likely to abandon your site. Therefore, not only are shipping costs important, but all pricing. You want to make your prices straightforward and easy to read. Otherwise, your customers will have to do the math themselves which will be a massive turnoff and will increase your cart abandonment rates.  

3. They’re not ready to buy

A lot of the time, online shoppers are not necessarily shopping, but are browsing. A lot of people tend to use their shopping cart to store items they may wish to purchase in the future. Typically, 38% of people spend their time researching the items rather than purchasing them.

4. Poor website experience

If your website has poor navigation, crashes or shows any errors this can be a major turn off for your users. Therefore, cart abandonment isn’t just about the checkout process but the entire experience. Therefore, ensuring your site is easy to understand and displays a sense of trustworthiness will ensure your customers stay longer. To help better your customer’s experience, take a look at our services!

5. Mobile responsiveness

As we don’t all carry our computers around, mobile phones allow us to shop online at any time no matter where we are. Therefore, ensuring your website is responsive and the mobile experience is good quality is a vital aspect when it comes to lowering your businesses cart abandonment.  If your site does not work well on a mobile and does not load quickly it is more likely for the cart to be abandoned.

6. Complicated checkout

Checkout can be a stressful process if your web page is unorganised and not easy to use. The more complicated the process becomes the more likely your customers will decide to shop elsewhere. Therefore, some annoyances people encounter whilst making a purchase include having to create an account or not finding coupon codes. 37% of people say that having to create an account is a major turnoff when purchasing something online.  

7. Payment problems

When purchasing online, trust is a major issue as you have to be willing to hand over personal information. Studies show that younger people are more willing to hand over this information in comparison to the older generations. Therefore, choosing ways to ensure your customers feel safe and secure is dependent on your target market and is extremely important. Also including various payment options on your checkout page is imperative as different people prefer to use different payment methods. Therefore, it’s necessary to cater to everyone’s individual preferences.

Therefore, cart abandonment is a major problem affecting many businesses however, can be fixed. To ensure your businesses rate of cart abandonment decreases here are some things you can do.

1. Offer free or discounted shipping

As shipping is the major reason for cart abandonment, a quick fix could be to offer free shipping. However, to positively do this you need to ensure you have enough margin on your products to cover those extra costs as well. The way to ensure you have enough revenue is having a threshold. Threshold can be understood as offering free shipping once the customer’s cart has reached a certain amount.  

2. Improve your Call to action

Call to actions (CTA) are essential and inspire your visitors to go straight to the product pages, encouraging them to buy more.  Some things to help improve your CTA include using action words such as “buy” or “shop”, using a sense of urgency such as “now” or “today” and always ensuring it is visible and easy to read.

3. Send abandoned cart recovery emails

Using the abandoned cart recovery emails is an influential technique, as this can remind your customer to buy the items which have been sitting in their cart. Studies show that if you send an email within a day, you can recover 60% of sales. Sending a recovery email within a few days of the cart being loaded and including a discount code or other incentive for finalising the sale will ultimately entice the customer to purchase the items or even keep expanding their cart.  

Need help reducing cart abandonment and improving your customer’s experience? Check out our services and how we can help you!