According to the Baymard Institute, close to 70% of online shoppers abandon carts before completing checkout. That means they put items in an online shopping cart but leave before completing the entire checkout process.
Some top reasons consumers give for shopping cart abandonment include:
- Unexpected shipping costs or other fees, such as taxes, during final guest checkout
- Being required to create an account during the checkout flow
- Delivery estimates that are too slow
- Lack of checkout options that meet the consumer’s needs
- Shopping cart pages and processes that are confusing or complex
When you work to reduce shopping cart abandonment or recapture sales when cart abandonment has occurred, you can save a lot of revenue and drive more conversions on your site. Working to convert online shoppers you already have on your pages helps generate more ROI for your marketing efforts and can actually turn a cart abandonment situation into a loyal customer relationship.
Check out the nine tips below for reducing shopping cart abandonment to get started.
1. Be Transparent About All Costs on Checkout Pages
Many shoppers are turned off when they get to the final checkout page and the price suddenly jumps by tens of dollars or more because of shipping, taxes and other fees. These seemingly hidden costs can feel like a bait-and-switch, eroding customer confidence in your entire sales and service process.
Instead of surprising shoppers when you really want them to press the pay button, be transparent about pricing throughout the shopping cart process.
If you offer free shipping, for example, but require them to spend a certain amount first, post that prominently on your site so they know. Include an automated calculator on the shopping cart page that indicates how much potential customers must add to their cart to get to the free shipping threshold.
2. Include Progress Indicators to Stem Online Shopping Cart Abandonment
Prospective customers may be in a hurry or simply impatient with an ecommerce website that takes forever to navigate. Based on user behavior online across all industries, a benchmark for how long someone spends on a web page, including those belonging to ecommerce retailers, is around 52 seconds.
While someone shopping online is invested and likely to spend more time than that, a long, frustrating cart process can increase shopping cart abandonment rates.
Include progress indicators to keep people in the know on the process. By showing people they have, say, three steps or two pages left, you reduce shopping cart abandonment.
3. Include Thumbnails of Products Throughout the Checkout Process
Most people aren’t going to forget what’s in their shopping cart (unless they’re on a serious shopping spree), but including thumbnail images of the products they’ve placed in their cart can be another grounding technique that builds customer trust.
The online customer can see exactly what they’ve put in a cart and how it’s adding up to the total amount of their purchase. The images may also remind the consumer of the unique selling proposition related to each item — which is why they put it in their cart to begin with. That spurs on completed purchases.
4. Make Navigation Between Cart and Ecommerce Store Effortless
Reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate in your store by creating a seamless process that supports the customer journey organically.
People navigating online stores want to be able to put things in their carts, make sure they aren’t going to pay high shopping costs, see what payment options are offered and then return to shopping to add new items if they want. They may also want to move between shopping carts and the online business as they decide between products they want to buy.
Shoppers abandon carts because they can’t shop seamlessly as they can in a brick and mortar store. Make sure your site serves online customers well throughout the entire shopping process.
5. Optimize Pages to Address Slow Load Times
Site speed can play a huge role in your shopping cart abandonment rate. Lagging page load times slow down the checkout process and make it hard to view product pages quickly when buying online. It may also mean more customers simply run out of time when they’re shopping and fail to complete purchases.
When customers want to enter their payment information and make a purchase but don’t have time to because your pages load too slowly, you rely on them remembering to come back later. How often do you think that happens? When customers abandon carts, they don’t typically come back without you prompting them to.
In short: Faster load times equals more sales for your online store. Reach out to a WordPress expert that can help you with WordPress page speed optimization to increase those sales.
6. Enable Guest Checkout With Multiple Payment Options
One of the best ways to reduce the average cart abandonment rate for your digital store is to ensure every consumer has a checkout option that works for them. Offer multiple payment methods, including Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, Google Pay, credit cards, PayPal and even digital checks.
Not sure what payment methods you should invest in? Ask for customer feedback — let consumers tell you how they want to pay. Once you add new payment methods to your shopping cart processes, inform shoppers on your website so they know before they even start to make a purchase.
7. Don’t Force Signups or Unnecessary Sharing on Your Checkout Page
While you can certainly offer guest checkout options that include creating an account to get future perks or providing additional information not required for the sale, don’t force those issues. Shoppers abandon carts when they have to put too much information out there. You’re likely already asking them to share their credit card information online, so keep everything else as simple as possible.
8. Use Trust Logos and Icons to Reduce Cart Abandonment
Consumers must enter personal and financial information like credit card details when shopping with you. Increase trust and convert shoppers at higher rates by including trust signals such as security logos in prominent positions on your website and shopping cart pages.
Make sure the logos are recognizable and commonplace — such as the “Norton Secured” logo, which replaced the commonplace “VeriSign Secured” logo.
Data cited by Shopify indicates almost 61% of consumers hadn’t purchased something online because trust logos were missing. And more than 75% of consumers opted against making a purchase because they didn’t recognize the trust logos.
9. Use Email to Reconnect With Online Shoppers
Whether you lose someone because of perceived high shipping costs or they simply got distracted and forgot to finalize a purchase, abandoned cart emails can help you save the sale and even increase average order value.
These emails are an important type of digital marketing tool for online retailers. Launch them automatically when someone has left a cart without finalizing a purchase for a few hours or a day to remind the person to come back and shop.
If you need help with your WordPress Ecommerce site, our team of experts at WP SitePlan are here to help. Contact our team today for WordPress website help at (866) 956-2330 and discover how WPSitePlan can help you get the most from your WordPress site.
