If you own an E-commerce store, you must know about the shopping Cart Abandonment Rate. You don’t want to bear the loss of your sales. Once you optimize the cart page, you’ll find reasons why buyers do not complete the buying process. Cart Abandonment Rate Optimization is one of the critical tasks for online businesses. You can’t revert the abandonment rate. Yet, the incorporation of specific strategies can improve your shopping cart abandonment rate.
This article will guide you through valuable statistics. and discuss different ways to improve your shopping cart abandonment rate:
What Exactly Is Cart Abandonment?
There’s a good chance you may have heard of the cart abandonment rate somewhere. Well, there’s no rocket science to it – it refers to the total amount of individuals who include an item to their cart. Yet, these individuals don’t pay and complete the checkout procedure.
Shopping cart abandonment is a failure to complete an online order. It revolves around how a visitor checks out your online store without making an order. The digital marketing techniques have advanced but online businesses still face cart abandonment.
Various elements contribute to a high cart abandonment rate. It points to faulty user experience and twisted sales funnel. And together, they make the checkout flow more complicated. That said, optimization of user experience is easier said than done.
But once you fix the issues in your check out process, it would stabilize your cart abandonment rate. This altogether, in turn, will increase revenue and sales.
What about Customer Acquisition Cost?
The total expense to convert one lead to a customer refers to customer acquisition cost (CAC). For digital marketers, the customer acquisition cost is a vital metric to track.
A customer acquisition strategy can help you measure the spontaneous reaction of visitors. You can see how strategy is working and make relevant adjustments. You can even use CAC to scale up your business operations and attract more investors.
What is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate?
As of now, the current average cart abandonment rate is almost as high as 70%. But, the average abandonment cart rate in 2018 rose to a whopping 80%. A study has shown that fashion retailers have the lowest average abandoned cart rate.
Most Common 8 Reasons Why do buyers abandon carts?
Often you wonder why people are not purchasing the products after adding them to their cars? The question that you keep asking yourself in this situation is what issues they are facing? You want to get a clear idea about what is stopping them to convert. Though everybody’s problem is different, some common reasons often cause shopping cart abandonment. Some of such issues are listed below –
1. Too high cost
Sometimes because of some unobvious reasons like unexpected taxes, shipping costs, delivery charges etc. the cost becomes too high. Because of this reason, most of the people leave their carts. Budget is the most important factor for any purchase. Often people keep adding their favourite items to their carts, but at the end, due to some unanticipated additional expenses, when the amount becomes too high, they tend to abandon some of the items.
2. Technical issues
Most of the time the customers abandon their carts because the process does not work smoothly. They face technical issues while adding items to carts or making the payments or to check out. It happens if all the elements of your online shop do not function properly.
3. Unclear checkout process
Often people leave because of a lengthy and confusing checkout process. If the form is spread over many pages, the fields seem ambiguous or there are no proper checkboxes for the items or payment options, not enough space to enter the shipping address, it is no wonder that the customers will leave. To get rid of this problem, it is necessary to keep the forms short. The field details should be clear and there should not be any scope for ambiguity.
4. Difficulty in making payment
Often your customers leave because they don’t find any convenient payment options. Everybody’s preference is different. Some people prefer to make the payment through their credit cards while some are accustomed to various payment gateways. Interestingly, a large number of people still prefer cash on delivery options. It is better to keep different payment options open for the convenience of different sets of customers.
5. Payment security issues
Security is a major concern for any eCommerce business. Everybody wants some kind of assurance that their personal information is secured before making payment. If they feel that they are safe and secure, they will move ahead to complete the transaction. Otherwise, cart abandonment is obvious.
6. Coupon code issues
There are times when people face some issues related to their coupon codes. Sometimes the coupon code does not match and sometimes they get a message saying that they have entered an invalid coupon code. In this kind of situation, it is quite obvious that they will quit in the middle. So, it is advisable to check whether your customers are leaving because of some coupon code related issue if they are not converting.
7. Too long time for delivery
Everyone expects fast delivery when they go for online shopping. Many times delivery timelines are set on the basis of the geographical location of the customers. So, if a customer stays far away from the marketplace or the storehouse, it may take a long time to deliver. In such a situation, customers may feel like cancelling the order. Most of the time, because of unsuitable timeline customers abandon their carts.
8. The requirement to create account
If you make account creation mandatory for online payment, it may irritate some of the prospect customers. Many times people come across product ads in various social platforms. If they like the items, they feel like buying it and click on the CTA button. If they find a prompt that says they will have to create an account to proceed forward to make the payment, it is highly likely that they will quit. Because they are preoccupied with something. In their leisure time, they like to browse through different social platforms and check the new release. You should keep the purchasing option open to all keeping these types of customers in mind.
How to Calculate Cart Abandonment Rate of a website?
It is a ratio of number of potential buyers adding products in the cart to number of people actually completing the proccess.
In Equation form it should look like this;
(1-Number of Total Conversions/ Number of Carts created)* 100
With HumCommerce you can have this data at your fingertip.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate: Statistics
Here are some of the eye-opening cart abandonment stats:
Yes, a different industry may experience a different shopping cart abandonment rate. But the cart abandonment rate seems to average under 70%.
The abandonment rate for mobile users is as high as 85.65%
At least 39% of mobile users have abandoned shopping carts due to hesitancy in giving out personal information.
More than 45% of the shoppers have abandoned carts because the Discount Code has expired. or hasn’t worked.
Prominent E-commerce brands lose sales revenue of $18 billion each year because of abandoned carts.
Optimization of check out process can boost conversions by 35.62%
More than 50% of shoppers abandon carts to avoid rewriting their shipping or credit card information
More than 55% of potential buyers will abandon shopping carts once the waiting time goes over a mere three seconds to load the page.
Checkout flow has an average of 23.48% and form fields a 14.88%.
Complete optimization of checkout flow can reduce form elements as low as 12 and form fields to 7. (Source)
How to Analyze Cart Abandonment
While analysing cart abandonment, there are few factors to take into consideration.
The core features of HumCommerce tool will help you best analyse the cart abandonment. These features are Heatmps, Session recordings, Visitors analysis, form analytics, eCommerece data, Survery and Polls.
We have done a seprate post covering all the important factors to consider to analyse cart abandonement. It also covers how to use the core features of HumCommerce to analyze cart abandonement.
12 Best Ways to Deal with Abandonment Rate
Cart Abandonment Rate Optimization requires a strategic approach with pre-determined activities. Here are some of the practical ways to lower the abandonment rate of your website:
1. Allow Guests to Checkout
For several decades, we believed that the accumulation of data will lead to more sales. New age marketing has come to realize that online shoppers don’t need an account to checkout. They can check-in as guests and complete the buying process without any hassles.
The necessity to create an account can reduce users’ shopping experience. It further discourages them from purchasing on your site. So, potential customers leave without delay. Thus, the ideal course of action would be to allow shoppers to shop as a guest without having to log in.
2. Your Checkout Process Should be Simple
It is of utmost importance to simplify your checkout process. Also, don’t jump on your users for every piece of information. Instead, decrease the fields and segment your checkout process into simpler steps. It’ll help your potential customers to take one step at a time and provide you with information at ease.
3. Gradually Develop Customer Trust
Online retailers, for instance, shouldn’t treat their visitors naively. Online visitors are aware of fraudsters and frauds both. It is no wonder most of the users are reluctant to input their valuable financial data on unknown sites.
You should put yourself in their position and build long-term trust. Your visitors should feel safe and secure on your website. And it is your job to ensure you don’t use offensive or misleading signs.
You can use customer testimonials, third-party reviews, certification badges to build trust. Showcase your fair return policy that might solve the grievances of the online users.
4. Provide Multi-Payment Options
Many online shoppers tend to buy an item only through a preferable mode of payment. And why wouldn’t they? It actually makes more sense. For example, several customers don’t have a credit or debit card. They may want to pay through a service such as PayPal or American Express. So, offer more than one payment option to your customers.
5. Provide Smart Upsells
Do you know how many online users don’t complete the buying process due to high shipping costs? Many users abandon carts due to reasons such as shipping charges, service taxes, or extra fees.
Use free shipping promotions, coupon codes, or special discounts offers, to avoid abandonment. By adding these, you will be able to improve conversion rates. These can also help decrease cart abandonment rates on your website.
6. Integrate Live-chat Support System
Sometimes online shoppers will have one or more questions about the buying process. And it is your job to offer online customer help through live chat support. Help customers request information about any online products and make an informed decision.
Once you offer a live chat support system in real-time, your buyers will be able to ask any question on the spot. You should think of it as an opportunity to influence customers to complete the order. And the high shopping cart conversion rate means high customer satisfaction.
7. Don’t Hesitate to Showcase Product Thumbnails
It is easy to dwell on visual representation as compared to textual information, for buyers. The images you choose to incorporate on your site will have a significant impact on your cart abandonment rate. As a matter of fact, several e-commerce brands use it as a reassurance strategy for potential visitors.
8. Cart Abandonment Rate Optimization & Emails
The abandoned cart emails are reminders sent through email to potential buyers. The term abandonment applies because users fail to finish their buying process.
The abandoned emails are for informing online shoppers about remaining items. They provide a straightforward method to make the abandoned sale. Writing a good abandoned cart email is a more cost-efficient and practical way to regain lost revenue.
9. Remarketing advertisements
Dynamic retargeting ads are another powerful option to bring back the abandoned customers. You can place these ads on Facebook, YouTube, Google or any other social media platforms. The biggest advantage of running a remarketing campaign is you can deliver customized ad contents to all the customers. You can show them eye-catching pictures of all the items they have abandoned along with a “Buy Now” CTA button. You can give some discount. It may work quite effectively to convince the costumes to buy the items they have abandoned.
10. Push notifications
Push notifications are very useful tools for remarketing. They are easy to use as they are simply device-specific opt-ins. You can deliver personalised push notifications to the abandoned costumes after regular intervals to bring them back. Design your notifications nicely to make it work better. Add an emotional appeal. Give some discounts or other offers to encourage impulsive buying. The disadvantage of this option is, you need customers’ permission to send them a notification. So, you can use it only for the customers who have given their consent for these.
11. Social media
Social media messaging is always more penetrating than many other tools like emails or push notifications. They are more cost-effective than paid tools like ads. You can use them in a planned way to win back the lost opportunities. One of the most widely used social media tools nowadays is Facebook chatbot massaging. It helps you to deliver personalized messages in realtime. You can use attractive images along with CTAs to attract customers. As this option is very eye catching and effective, it is seen that it drives more CTR than other remarketing tools. But, you need to craft your message in an impressive way to encourage your customers to purchase.
12. Exit-intent popup
The best practice to fix the issue of cart abandonment is not to let the customers abandon any item they have added to the cart. It can be done with the help of an active support team. Keep monitoring the movements of the visitors in your shop and display an exit-intent popup when you feel that a customer is about to leave. Design the popup nicely, use eye-catching images and communicate some kind of urgency through your messages. You can give some offer and say that the offer is valid for only a few days. It may encourage customers to buy.
How Abandoned Cart Emails Affect Conversion Rate?
The abandoned cart emails are reminders sent through email to potential buyers. The term abandonment applies because users fail to finish their buying process. Use different third-party tools to access abandoned cart information of your e-commerce store. Build sales funnel for your business goals and see for yourself how visitors behave on your website.
The abandoned emails are for informing online shoppers about remaining items. They provide a straightforward method to make the abandoned sale. A sequence of emails is a more cost-efficient and practical way to regain lost revenue. Sending out an Email regarding shopping cart is an important activity for Cart Abandonment Rate Optimization.
Conclusion
Contrary to misguided perception, there’s no such thing as a 0% cart abandonment rate. As harsh as it may seem, you’ll always have users who abandon their carts. You can still use many re-engagement and re-targeting strategies to improve conversion rates.
With the right strategy at the right time, you can figure out what’s missing from your online store. Set up session recordings and see what is missing on the website. Pinpoint specific elements that are discouraging your visitors to complete their order. Use the above information to optimize your shopping cart and increase conversion rate.
How have you been handling abandoned carts on your site? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on Cart Abandonment Rate Optimization.
