How to Lower Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Shopping carts are one of the most important tools for eCommerce website owners, but they are also one of the most difficult moments for them.

Many eCommerce owners have the problem that the cart abandonment rate is very high. This rate is increasing every day, and sometimes they don’t know why.

If you own an online shop or e-store, then you can follow the recommendations from this article and minimise your cart abandonment rate.

Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is a problem that has been around for years, but it is only recently that people are starting to take notice. Retailers are losing billions of dollars annually due to shopping cart abandonment rates estimated at 15% to 70%. The average American grocery store loses $10 million in sales annually.

Recent research indicates that the average e-commerce site loses nearly 75 per cent of its shoppers during the shopping cart phase of a transaction. While that statistic is probably influenced by a few terrible websites, the fact remains that most sites are losing huge numbers of customers by not focusing on their shopping carts.

Shopping cart abandonment can be very difficult to overcome. In fact, if you are having trouble overcoming the abandonment rate for your carts on your online store, you may have a larger problem. There are several reasons why someone would abandon a shopping cart. It could be a technical issue on their end or an issue with your store.

Fortunately, you can vastly decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate by taking a few relatively minor steps.

Fewer Steps are Better

This mantra is as old as e-commerce itself. You will surely see some attrition by forcing your customers to go through multiple pages. You should ask yourself: is all the information I am collecting necessary? Is there another configuration that would reduce the number of steps my customers face?

Surprisingly, however, this is probably the last step you should take. Unless your process is particularly laborious, empirical studies indicate that this will likely affect your attrition minimally for the cost and effort required. So, I am not saying to reduce your checkout steps, but you should prioritize the other actions above this one.

Progress Indicators

In e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores, uncertainty is the single biggest inhibitor to conversions. This is certainly easy to imagine when you consider some brick-and-mortar examples. BestBuy stores have transitioned to a single line for all their cashiers rather than having customers pick a cashier to line up in front of. Why? The answer is simple, uncertainty hurts conversion rates.

Humans have an instinctual desire to know what lies ahead. By including a progress indicator at every step of the checkout process, you will see remarkable customer retention increases. Even if you have a 10-step checkout process, letting customers know where they are along the process will ensure a much greater number of completions.

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

If a store’s layout isn’t user-friendly, customers are likelier to abandon their shopping carts. If you don’t make your shopping cart user-friendly, you won’t be able to lower your cart abandonment rate. Put down as much detail as possible for the sake of the buyer. Assuming they know precisely what they want and when they need it, your customers won’t abandon their shopping carts.

Shoppers respond to sensory stimulation. People like to take things off the shelf and inspect them. Because that option isn’t available for e-commerce sites, you need to compensate for this deficiency as best as possible. One way to ensure better conversions is to include pictures in the store and the cart.

Shoppers, especially those new to e-commerce, want to verify and re-verify that they have made the correct choice. Many of these customers are lost if you force them to use their browser’s back buttons to do so. By placing a picture of the item to be purchased within the shopping cart, much of this need is alleviated, meaning lower abandonment for you.

Provide Total Cost Estimates Early

One of the most overlooked customers’ concerns is their distrust of e-commerce sites regarding shipping. Maybe it’s the years of telemarketers selling garbage products for nearly nothing and then making their profit on the shipping.

Whatever the reason, it is essential to allay fears of hidden costs as soon as possible by providing your users with a total cost estimate earlier rather than later. Is there something to be said about bringing the customer in with a low-ball lead price? Yes. However, after the leader, it is essential to let customers know what they are paying as early as possible to give them a few moments to acclimate to the increase.