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Statistics prove that nearly seven out of every 10 customers who add items to their digital shopping carts do not complete the process. This card abandonment is due to a variety of reasons ranging from high prices, complicated checkout process, shipping costs, or even lack of trust in the website. To prevent shopping cart abandonment, it is vital for online retailers to ascertain the reasoning behind the abandonment behavior and then implement strategies to address these issues. Thankfully, there are seven ways to combat this all too common problem, which are listed for your convenience below:
1. Navigation
The first step in combating shopping cart abandonment begins with a deep look at your website itself. Is it user-friendly? Can it be easily navigated from mobile devices as well as on laptops or computers? If you find your website difficult to traverse or the process of making a purchase is at all confusing, then making sure your website is easier to navigate overall is an important first step in getting customers through the buying process.
2. Payment
Today’s buyers want to use a variety of payment options. Therefore, some customers might abandon their cart when they see that you don’t accept their preferred type of payment. While it's understandable for you to have some restrictions on the payment process, be as open to as many types of payments as possible.
This will increase the chances that you offer a type of payment that a customer is set up to use and trusts. It can be a hassle to set up an entirely new way to pay simply to checkout and pay for an item they want, which can lead some people to abandon the process altogether and shop elsewhere. There are multiple options you can employ today on your site, including the following:
- Digital Wallets: This includes payment options like Venmo, Apple Pay, and PayPal. These are very common in today’s digital world.
- Traditional Credit and Debit Cards: This, of course, includes standard methods of payment like Discover, MasterCard, and Visa.
- Cryptocurrencies: This is a newer method of payment and is not as widely used or accepted. Options like Solana, Ethereum, and Bitcoin are popular examples.
- Buy Now, Pay Later: This type of payment allows customers to go ahead and buy what they want on time, using installments as payment. Popular options include PayPal Credit and Affirm installment payments.
3. Incentives
Sometimes, as mentioned above, adding shipping costs to an order can be the cause of cart abandonment. Therefore, one way to counteract this is to offer free shipping or other incentives for buying today. This will encourage customers not to wait but to go ahead and purchase what they have selected.
4. Simplify
If the process of checking out is too complicated, you will increase the risk of cart abandonment. Therefore, make sure that your entire checkout process from beginning to end is as simple and straightforward as possible. Remove any unnecessary steps or fields to cut down on the number of steps required to complete the checkout process as well. Less is more when it comes to this process. An Accenture study found that an astounding 87% of online shoppers will abandon their carts due to a complex checkout process. Another 55% will not shop with the retailer again at all, which highlights the importance of simplification even more.
5. Descriptions
Provide clear descriptions of all products or services you are featuring on your site. You can cut down on questions customers have and reduce the risk of them abandoning their purchase if you give them as much information as possible. This includes dimensions, product details like fabric type, and more.
6. Emails
Another way to decrease the chances of cart abandonment— at least permanent abandonment— is to implement abandoned cart emails. This will remind customers that their items are still sitting in their carts waiting to be purchased. If a customer has truly forgotten they have a cart sitting ready for completion, this can be the little push they need to get back to the process. Research from 500 leading global brands found that 44.1% of all abandoned cart emails are opened, which in turn led to recovered sales in 29.9% of those cases.
7. Support
Finally, consider offering live chat or phone support on your site as a way to help customers with questions or concerns they might have involving the checkout process. If, for example, their payment isn’t going through, such a feature could advise them on how to make necessary changes in their payment to get it to go through. It could also include answering questions about the product itself that might make a difference in gaining a sale or having a customer decide against purchasing a product.
You Can Improve Your Cart Abandonment Numbers
Thankfully, by implementing the seven strategies listed above, you can reduce your shopping cart abandonment numbers and effectively increase sales for your online business. At fuze32, we are here to help you put these strategies and more into action. Contact us today to learn how to get started on these seven steps.
