According to data from Baymard Institute, the average online shopping cart abandonment rate is 67%; in other words, you should expect 67% of those who use your shopping cart not to complete their purchase. This number is significantly higher for some businesses, up to 80% according to data from Rejoiner, especially when there’s no optimization system in place to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
Imagine how much more your business can make if you can get twice as many people to complete the checkout process on your website just by making a few tweaks.
Here are some ways you can reduce shopping cart abandonment on your website:
1. Make Pricing Information Available Upfront
By ensuring that users don’t have to add a product to cart or click the checkout button before they find out how much it really costs, you’ll significantly reduce the chances of potential customers abandoning their shopping cart.
2. Send Reminder Emails to Customers who Abandon their Shopping Cart
According to data from Rejoiner, an email targeting cart abandoners can increase sales by up to 15%. This will vary depending on the size of your business and other methods you’re implementing to reduce cart abandonment but a 1% increase in sales could mean a lot for your business.
According to data from Internet Retailer, Movies Unlimited, a site dedicated to helping people find hard-to-find video films, was able to increase sales from abandoned carts by 1.5% just by sending a reminder email to customers 24 hours after they abandon a cart.
3. Reduce the Number of Payment Pages
You’ll be experiencing significantly high cart abandonment rates if potential customers have to click the checkout button on 5 different pages before they can finally checkout. According to data from a 2010 survey by Webcredible, 10% of the people surveyed abandon a cart due to lengthy checkout process.
Depending on the nature of your business, you might require a lot of details before potential customers are able to complete a purchase but you can increase sales by including an “express checkout” option for those who don’t want to wait.
4. Customize the Payment Form
Sometimes, your payment form could be the culprit in getting people to abandon their carts.
There are often several reasons people avoid filling a payment form, but here are some of the top reasons:
Too many fields: When a customer has to spend 5 minutes filling your payment form and there’s no way to avoid this, you’ll experience a high cart abandonment rate. A great way to overcome this problem is by reducing the number of fields included on your payment form; if you still want people to fill certain fields that are not really necessary to complete the checkout, you’ll get better results by clearly indicating that these fields are optional.
Confusing Fields: People also abandon a cart when the fields are too confusing; if a field on your payment form is not very self-explanatory or if it could mean something different to different people, then explaining what the field means will increase the chances of people completing the payment process.
For example, a major field found in most payment forms that can be classed as confusing is the “Company” field; most people who don’t own a company don’t know what to do when they experience this field. You will get a lot more people to complete their order by removing fields like this or by clearly indicating that they’re optional.
Online travel company, Expedia, was able to increase annual revenue by $12 million by removing the “Company” field from their payment form.
5. Reveal all Necessary Information Upfront
You can get more people to complete the checkout process by revealing all information necessary to complete an order upfront; this includes all charges, what makes a customer qualify for a refund/offer or anything that is required to complete the order.
Data from a 2010 Webcredible survey has revealed that 41% of online shoppers abandon their carts due to hidden charges.
6. Make the Registration Process Seamless
Data has shown that 29% of online shoppers dislike being forced to register before they’re able to complete an order.
Except it’s very critical to your business success, make sure you don’t force people to register to complete an order; if you must, then you’ll get more people to complete the checkout process by making registration seamless. For example, you could partner with your payment processor to have an account automatically created based on data from payment details provided.
Another approach is to ask users to register after they’ve successfully completed the checkout process; this becomes extremely easy since they have already completed the checkout process. Most people hate registering because they have too many passwords to remember; you can prevent this by integrating with top websites and social networks like Google, Twitter and Facebook.
7. Include More Payment Options
Most online shoppers abandon a cart after they try to pay and find out that their preferred payment option isn’t available.
Don’t just accept Paypal and don’t just accept credit cards; provide customers with all payment options necessary to complete the checkout.
8. Make Shipping Free or Extremely Cheap
According to data from a Forrester study, 44% of online buyers abandon their carts due to high shipping and handling costs.
You can get more people to complete the checkout process by making shipping free or extremely cheap and by advertising this fact; data from a recent Compete study has shown that 93% of online buyers are more likely to buy more products if free shipping is included and that 67% of online buyers prefer purchase items in a store instead of online to avoid shipping costs .
In other words, you could encourage people to add more products to their carts to qualify for free shipping.
9. Your Website is Unstable or Unreliable
31% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to an unstable or unreliable site.
When your website is extremely slow or when it creates certain fears in potential customers, their chances of abandoning their cart will increase significantly.
Slow websites alone cost the US economy billions of dollars yearly and one of the major fears people have has to do with the security of their payment details; by optimizing your site to be faster and by assuring people, with seals and logos of reputable organizations, that their details is safe and secure with you, you’ll significantly reduce their chances of abandoning their carts.
