Shopping cart abandonment is a phrase which you must have heard a lot of times regardless of which kind of website you have.
Whether you already are an ecommerce owner or planning to be one, cart abandonment is something which is really going to come in your way sooner or later.
The fact is:
Every other business is going through some sort of losses due to the shopping cart abandonment.
But…
Have you ever thought about the reasons because of which people abandon the shopping carts?
There are plenty of reasons, my fellows!
It can include:
- Complicated Checkout Process
- Lack of Navigation
- Putting up Surprise Costs
- Very Few payment methods
- Lack of social proofs
- And many more…
Here is a Bonus Read Out for you on the major Reasons Your Customers Are Abandoning Their Online Shopping Carts. Check this detailed post out and find out what you are missing at!
You might be amazed on the things you have been practicing since long and they would turn out to be the reasons for your cart abandoned!
But… Don’t go into any shocks! Instead, just look for the solution!
The Good News is that I’m here to help you!
In this post, I have some actionable tips which will give you the real solutions for controlling your cart abandonment rate.
Contents
Here you go with the 6 Best Shopping Cart Best Practices:
Make the Checkout Short and Simple:
Long and complex checkout processes in online shopping really puts the customer off and make him leave. You have to understand that he is shopping online for the sake of ease and to avoid hassle.
And If you are making your checkout process complicated for the customers, then what’s the use of shopping online.
Researches show that around 25% of the buyers abandon the shopping carts just because they are forced to register and make an account on the estore.
The lengthy registration procedure, never-ending forms, acquiring too many details…
These are the signs that you really want your carts to be abandoned, my friend!
Okay… Don’t panic!
I’m not here to scare you…
I do have a solution as well!
- Make the process really short
- Just add the essential fields in the form
- Work on your CTA buttons and their copy
- Make the Registration really easy
Let me share some examples!
User Interface Engineering, increased their conversions and revenues by $3000, 000 just by changing the ‘Register’ button to ‘Continue’ Button.
This is what a CTA button copy can do your sales!!
Offering a Guest Checkout is also very useful because in this case, everyone doesn’t have to create an account before shopping.
Remember:
While designing your cart, make it a point to guide your customer on every step.
Too many guidelines seem irritating at times but reasonable guidelines does help in providing proper navigation making the customer reach the final checkout easily.
The picture below shows an example of excessive navigators which are definitely making the customer confused and overloaded with the information.
This is an example of a site from where the customer is going to sign off in few minutes of surfing.
Just set a limited number of navigators which will guide the visitors and would not be a source of irritation for them at the same time.
But…
With total absence of indicators and navigator, your customer might get confused and just exit your website because of the confusion…
Thus abandoning your ecommerce shopping cart and raising your abandonment rate.
So, having a balance in everything is really important!
Offer ‘Save for later’ Option:
The online shopping market is no longer different than the conventional markets.
People do window shop on online markets now!
Some of them are just collecting the stuff which they want to buy later.
For people like these, there is an option called ‘Save for Later’ or often called a ‘Wish List’.
Offering this on your site is a great strategy to retain your customer for a longer run.
With this option, buyers can pick the stuff, put that in their cart and can keep filling it and then buy all at once when they think that they are done shopping.
See how Banana Republic adopted this strategy and succeeded:
This gives an edge over the rest of the online shopping marketplaces and also give a sense of personalization to the buyer.
Have a variety of Payment Methods:
Payment section in online shopping is the tricky part.
Remember:
Giving a variety of payment option is opening up gates for more customers and more sales eventually.
You have to admit that everyone doesn’t use credit card, offer them more options so that you don’t end up missing those sales.
Along with credit card and debit card, mobile users should have the options like PayPal, Google Payments, Amazon Checkout, Visa’s V.me and MasterPass.
Here’s a great piece of information which confirms that more payment methods affect conversion rates.
Offer Free Shipping to Reduce Cart Abandonment:
Perks do a great job in every kind of business!
So, one of the ease which you can offer and be different in the market is offering free shipping to the customer!
Remember:
People love the word ‘Free’. It excites them!!
So just deliver the goods for free and fulfill your carts more and more than before!
Another factor which you should check is that do not put extra costs on the customer.
Check how ‘Zappos’ made it so exciting by writing ‘Ships Free’ on its form:
Here’s another important fact:
Customers do not like surprises, especially when they are being charged for it.
So if you are thinking that you would inform the customer about any kind of charges like shipping costs or sign up costs at the end and the customer is going to go with the flow…
Then you are simply mistaken!!
The customer is going abandon your shopping cart right there and then and will exit your site.
So, no Surprises at the end!
If you want to charge the shipping cost, then inform beforehand with the use shipping calculator or any other way.
Otherwise, it’s the best to offer FREE SHIPPING!
Give Social Proofs:
Another great strategy to save your carts from being abandoned and to gain customer loyalty is to build trust!
Now:
How do you think is it possible?
It’s easier to become trustworthy when you already have some previous proofs with you!
Social Proof it is!!
Show maximum social proofs to your audience so that you can build trust on them…
Show them that there are people who love your service and the customer filling up his cart should be one of them also!
See how Pagely showed their Tweets on their site:
Use of Testimonials, Badges and Trust seals is also very much compelling when it comes to building trust.
Conclusions
So I’m assuming you must have got an idea about how to reduce shopping cart abandonment at your online store.
There are various cart abandonment solution which can be carried out…
But this post has just given you some of the most effective practices that can bring your conversions back.
Other than these solutions, what else can help you further with controlling this cart abandonment?
How about Sales Funnels?!
Have you thought about using these amazing funnels at your site?
These are simply awesome and magical in fact. The sales or conversion funnels let you see where your customers exactly fall off in the whole checkout process.
Among the different checkout stages such as homepage, product page, payment page and the final checkout page; this funnel tell you from where your customer exited and abandoned the cart. With this, you can see which stage is being the turn off or the barrier for your sales.
The other tools like Heatmap and session recording help you further in seeing the customer activity on each page. They show you where did the customer go, clicked, stayed and exited from.
These tools help you see the customer activity on your estore. Other than these now you can also analyse and optimize your checkout forms with form analytics.
You can get all these amazing tools from TruConversion. These are really powerful tools which you should definitely get to improve your cart design, save your carts from abandonment and to boost your sales!
Hope you’d implement all the above mentioned strategies and work towards your shopping cart recovery!
At the end, here’s another BONUS for you: Shopping Cart Design! This post is going to give you some amazing insights.
Enjoy and have a Happy Cart Optimization!
