If you own an eCommerce store, It is guaranteed that you’re seeing potential customers leaving your online store without placing their orders every day.
Despite having the best design, best navigation, and to-the-point product pages, visitors are still browsing your online store and adding a product or two in their carts, only to end up closing the tab.
Any idea why this is happening? If you’re trying to figure out why so many potential customers are leaving your online store without making a purchase, then you’ve arrived at the right place.
In this post, we’re going to share everything from what is abandoned cart to how to reduce cart abandonment rate of your eCommerce store.
What is eCommerce Shopping Cart Abandonment?
An abandoned cart is a term used in the eCommerce industry to describe when a potential customer adds products to his or her shopping cart or even reaches the checkout page but later leaves your website before placing their orders.
This is called shopping cart abandonment. And unfortunately, shopping cart abandonments are unpreventable.
As of today, the average cart abandonment rate is 68% globally. That means, out of every 100 potential customers, 68 of them simply walk away.
So, Why Shoppers Abandon Their Shopping Carts?
As it turns out, there are many frustrations and barriers that potential customers face when shopping online.
According to Statista's research:
- 70.19% of shoppers leave because of unexpected extra costs such as shipping, taxes, etc.
- 26% leave because they had to create an account to place their order
- 25% leave because they didn't trust the site with my credit card information
- 23% leave because delivery was too slow
- 22% leave because too long / complicated checkout process
- 13% leave because of the lack of payment options
These data already gave us incredible insights into why visitors abandon their shopping carts.
So now the question is, how to immediately recapture these lost customers before they’re long gone?
Fortunately, there are some proven ways to drastically reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates. Below, we have shared 5 sure-fire ways to decrease cart abandonment rate on an eCommerce Store.
How to Reduce Cart Abandonment: 5 Strategies to Decrease Cart Abandonment Rate
So now that we know why online shoppers abandon their shopping carts, let’s talk about what you can do to decrease cart abandonment rate on your eCommerce store.
1. Show All Extra Charges Upfront
As extra price shock is one of the main reasons why customers abandon their shopping carts, you’ll have to make sure that all costs are transparent on your all product pages.
The data clearly shows that online shoppers hate surprises. Therefore, you need to eliminate all surprises related to costs.
And the best way to eliminate the price surprise element is by displaying all extra fees including the shipping and taxes are made clear in the beginning so customers aren’t surprised by them after they add products to shopping carts.
Alternatively, you can also offer free shipping for high-value products and charge a minimal shipping fee for low-value products. This will not only help to reduce cart abandonment rates on your eCommerce store, but it will also encourage customers to add more products to increase the cart value and avail free shipping.
2. Offer Multiple Payment Options
Running an eCommerce business is like doing business with the whole world. Therefore, you must realize that offering just one or two payment options will definitely not be sufficient for customers around the world.
You need to incorporate all the popular payment methods for every country. And since the majority of worldwide traffic comes from mobiles, you also need to consider adding mobile payment options that are widely used by online shoppers.
So, if your eCommerce store offers only a single payment option (or very few), then you’re simply putting unnecessary obstacles for your customers, which ultimately hurts your sales.
On the other hand, offering a wide range of payment options won’t only eliminate the lack of payment options entirely, but it will also improve your customers’ shopping experience.
3. Allow Checking Out As a Guest
Forcing customers to create an account to make a purchase is a critical deterrent for completing the checkout process. Moreover, since 22% of potential customers leave simply because of no guest checkout option, you must immediately provide an option to checkout as a guest.
Now, of course, you’ll have to sacrifice customers’ valuable data, but by enabling guest checkout, you’ll make it a lot easier for potential customers to place their orders.
In fact, if you offer the guest checkout option, then not only previous customers will be definitely more likely to purchase from you again in the future, but they may also create an account on your online store to take advantage of certain benefits that you offer.
So, it’s actually a smart idea to provide a guest checkout option.
4. Make Your Checkout Process Lightning Fast
The checkout process is yet another biggest obstacle that keeps potential customers from placing their orders on your online store.
In simple terms, complicated and long checkout process often drive many potential customers away from making a purchase.
According to research, 27% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts because the checkout process is too long or complicated. So, one of the best ways to reduce the eCommerce cart abandonment rate is to make checkout on your online store lightning fast.
This could be done in a number of ways. However, the best option is to simply incorporate a One Step Checkout Extension into your Magento eCommerce store to decrease the steps to checkout.
One-step checkout allows you to not only strip down unnecessary steps in your checkout process, but it also helps to enable the guest checkout option on your eCommerce store.
5. Send Cart Abandonment Emails
Many times, online shoppers simply forget about completing their checkout process for personal reasons. It could be either they received an important phone call, had to pick up their kids, or simply remembered about an urgent chore.
Whatever it may be, there is still a chance to recapture these lost customers by sending a cart abandonment reminder email - or two or three. If you can only send one reminder email, do it. But it’s better to send a series of emails.
There is a perfect Magento 2 extension available called Abandoned Cart Email that will help you easily set up an automated sequence of cart abandonment reminder emails.
Here’s the best framework for sending cart abandonment reminder email series:
-
A short & simple reminder email
-
An email with a discount coupon & a deadline
-
Discount Deadline Reminder Email
Email 1. Short & Simple Reminder Email
If you’ve happened to capture the email address of cart abandoners, you can simply shoot a simple email to them for reminding them about the items that are still in their shopping carts.
In many cases, that’s all it takes to make recapture lost customers and make a sale.
Email 2. An Email with a Discount Coupon & a Deadline
The first simple reminder email should bring the majority of lost customers. But, if you want to capture as many as possible and ready to go the extra mile, then you should consider offering an enticing discount coupon to lure them back in and complete the checkout.
Note: Make sure not to offer a discount coupon regularly otherwise you’ll run the risk of training your potential customers to leave their items always in shopping carts in the hopes of receiving an email with a discount coupon.
The best way to avoid this risk is by sending reminder emails with discount coupons only once in a while.
Lastly, if you’re considering to offer a discount coupon, it’s also helpful to add a corresponding deadline. A deadline helps to convey that the discount won’t last forever and it will create an urgency to make a purchase right away.
The deadline timeline should be between 48 hours to 72 hours to inspire quick action among potential customers.
Email 3. Discount Deadline Reminder Email
In the last email, you simply want to send a simple reminder email about the deadline for the discount coupon given.
So, once you’ve sent the second email and the deadline comes close, you should let the customers know about the discount and its deadline for the last time.
This will help you to recapture the absent-minded customers and procrastinators who love getting things done close to the deadline.
This email will certainly help to bring in recapture some more lost customers and increase your eCommerce sales.
Final Words…
While the eCommerce industry is enjoying incredible growth in the past few years, but the business owners are still losing major opportunities due to cart abandonment issues.
However, these 5 shopping cart abandonment solutions will definitely help you to remedy the situation in your eCommerce business and decrease your eCommerce cart abandonment rate.