How to Avoid Abandoned Shopping Carts on Your eCommerce Site

Like most small business owners, you are likely searching for ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates on your website. While it is frustrating each time someone reaches the shopping cart step and leaves, there is some good news. By implementing certain steps, you can reduce these rates without having to re-do your entire eCommerce store. Some tips that will help you reduce the cart abandonment rate are found here.

Provide Customers with Free Shipping

Creating nice looking packaging with the help of professionals like Deepking Labels for your products is a great way to get people interested, but it may not be enough to get them to convert. This is when other incentives come into play.

One such incentive is free shipping. According to a recent study, approximately 44% of all consumers will abandon their carts because of the high shipping costs. A good way to prevent shopping cart abandonment is by offering free shipping. This is an incentive for customers to keep shopping with you, rather than going to the competition. It is also a huge selling point, so be sure you are taking advantage of it.

If you have a customer who bounces away from the checkout process with something in their cart, make sure to have a retargeting campaign in place to encourage them to come back. This will show the individual what they left behind, provide them with a new offer, discount, or some other type of incentive or encouragement that will get them to come back and complete the purchase. 

Eliminate Any Surprises

If free shipping isn’t an option, that’s fine. However, you can still reduce the number of shopping cart abandonment issues you have by getting rid of the surprises. If shipping costs don’t scare your buyers away, additional charges, such as fees, taxes, and other extra costs may cause them to turn away.

People who are shopping online don’t like surprises. You can eliminate surprise costs by making sure all additional costs are clear before they add anything to their cart. This is often difficult because shipping costs may vary, but this is when adding a shipping calculator can be helpful. Add a button to the product pages that allows someone to calculate the estimated costs before adding anything to the cart.

If there are additional fees, make sure they are listed clearly on your product pages. This will ensure they don’t surprise the customer when they arrive at the cart.

If the individual opts to bounce away, it is a good idea to take additional steps to get them back. Before allowing the customer to exit the page, have a pop up offer appear that provides a discount of some type. This will help ensure they have a reason to come back and complete their purchase. 

Along with providing a pop up featuring an incentive, another key incentive to keep people present on your site is to provide more information. Not everyone is motivated by price. In this situation, providing more information may be key to getting them to stick around. One way to do this is by having a live, pop up chat option to discuss what their issues may be. This is a proven tactic to get people to stick around and – hopefully – complete their purchase. 

Allow Guest Checkout

It’s not always necessary for you to ask your customers to create an account on your site before they decide to checkout. This is going to slow down the process and cause customers to bounce away. Filling out personal information, confirming email addresses, or something else is just asking too much of customers who likely have other online options to choose from.

A better option is to offer guest checkout. You can always ask a customer to create a new account after they have completed their purchase.

With a guest checkout, there’s no need to worry about a customer leaving because they feel like they have to disclose too much information. 

The guest checkout option is going to be enticing to impulse buyers and statistics have shown when this is an option, the abandonment rate is going to be reduced by up to 74% – or more. Keep in mind, you can always make it an option for your buyer to create an account once they have finished checking out. At this point they may be more willing to do this to ensure they can track their order.

Ensure the Checkout Process is Fast

All businesses want to sell more through their online store. If you want people to buy from your store, you should accept returns and make sure the entire checkout process is quick and easy. It is possible to reduce cases of shopping cart abandonment by eliminating any additional steps and by streamlining the entire checkout process.

Is it essential to make customers click through multiple pages before they can complete a purchase? The more ways you can simplify the entire checkout process, and the fewer hoops a person must jump through, the more likely they will actually finish checking out.

Improving Your Checkout Process

If you are searching for ways to improve the overall checkout process, there are several things to think about. When you are informed and know what to do and how to do it is the best way to ensure that the desired results are achieved. Use the tips here to get started. 

If you’re looking for help on your eCommerce site we know that Tillison Consulting are specialist, in providing a range of eCommerce services such as WooCommerce, Shopify SEO and CRO for eCommerce.