High cart abandon rates has plagued eCommerce websites for decades. I remember during my earlier years in an agency, we obsessed about trying to achieve a lower cart abandonment rate for our clients every week. Yes, it was an obsession then and still is today.
The whole point of your eCommerce website is to get people to visit and buy your products during regular season and dominating online marketing to increase revenue during the holidays. If your eCommerce site is experiencing a high cart abandonment rate, then you’re exactly the person this article was written to help. Read on!
There will be times when people put items into their shopping cart and don’t hit the buy button. It happens more often than you think. So how do we keep your shopper engaged enough to turn them into a paying customer? Glad you ask!
Your cart conversion rate is how often someone actually buy an item after they add it into the online cart. As straightforward as it sounds, it’s a very complex proposition.
If you notice that you have quite a low conversion rate from putting something in the store to actually buying it, you need to find ways to fix the issue so your conversion rate improve — generating more online sales for your eCommerce business.
In fact, this is one of the places I look at in Google Analytics when we audit a prospect’s eCommerce website. And believe me when I tell you that there is always quick wins to be had here.
Interested in achieving a lower cart abandonment rate? Before we get into how you can reduce your cart abandonment percentages, it is as important to understand why it’s that high in the first place.
Here are some reasons why you’re not getting more conversions in your cart (and what to do about it).
Why Your eCommerce Site Is Stuck With High Cart Abandonment Rate
There are easy ways to track your cart conversion rate through Google Analytics, for example. Setting up custom events allows you to go deeper into your cart activity.
If your cart conversion rate isn’t what you want it to be, you need to figure out why and improve conversion rate. But what should it be? That’s the million-dollar question.
There’s no right or wrong. But there are industry benchmarks. We all love benchmarks. The right question you should be asking is…how much higher can I go. Or, how much lower can I take my cart abandonment rate?
Here are some reasons why you’re not getting a better cart conversion rate. Some of these reasons might seem obvious, but from my experience, you’d be surprised how many eCommerce websites are missing these simple conversion rate enhancement elements.
Let’s dive in.
1. Lack of trust
It takes a lot for an online company to convince customers to trust them.
Many online companies don’t have a well-known name or established reputation to instill the confidence someone needs to actually get themselves to make a purchase.
People are extremely nervous about putting their information out there these days with the level of hacking going on. In order to get a lower cart abandonment rate, your eCommerce website must be trustworthy for shoppers to hand over their information to you.
Plus, customers want to know they will get a quality product in a reasonable amount of time. Improve your conversion rates by getting your customers to trust you more.
2. More expensive than expected
It can be frustrating for a customer when they get to the cart and find out that they will end up paying far more than they anticipated.
Most of the extra cost comes from delivery and additional fees.
Many people will not pay for what they think are overly expensive fees or delivery.
They will be even more frustrated if they feel like the expenses were thrown on them unexpectedly, ruining your cart conversion rate.
3. Lack of money
The truth of the matter is that often times people just won’t buy something because they decide it will not fit into their budget.
A person may be very interested in your product but need more time to get the money.
In some cases, the cart may just be a wish list they hope they can achieve one day but don’t know if they ever will.
Most eCommerce businesses will try to improve cart conversion rate by offering discounts for people who might need to save some money at the moment. But as I’ve always said, discounting is a race to the bottom for any business.
Instead, try other approaches to reduce your cart abandonment rate when money is the problem.
Services like AfterPay can help your customers with payments over time and could help reduce your cart abandonment.
4. Computer Illiteracy
Some people just aren’t great at using the computer. They may get confused throughout the checkout process.
They may also think they have completed everything and not realize there was one last step. They may not complete the purchase in this care.
If your customers get confused, they may also give up and just go get something at the store or at a less complicated online store.
You should make your website as simple as possible and offer service for people who have trouble.
9 Ways to Lower Cart Abandonment Rate for eCommerce Websites
When you need to improve your conversion rate, you want to do it quickly and effectively. There are a lot of methods you can use.
Use a number of different methods together to provide the best results. Here are just some of the ways to improve your conversion rate.
1. Use secure order forms
This should be a no-brainer in today’s standards for ecommerce sites.
The amount of identity theft these days is staggering. If someone doesn’t feel comfortable, they may not want to enter their information.
It’s your responsibility to make customers feel comfortable buying from you. It all starts with the website.
You want the website to look good and professional. Next, you need to focus on the order form.
The order form should be professional. There should not be any spelling or grammar errors. It should also have some tried and true stickers on it to help reassure the customers that the form is protected.
The sticker means that a large organization has protected the form. Some of the logos that provide reassurance include:
- VeriSign Secured
- Norton Secured
- McAfee Secure
- Verified by Visa
The symbol alone can help people feel better about entering their information. You will only get this symbol if your order form is actually protected by one of these companies.
If you don’t have this symbol, you may not be using a secure online store. You may need to look into alternative options to ensure you improve your conversion rate.
2. Include progress bar
It can be helpful for people to see how far along they are along in the purchasing process. This can help clarify if a particular order has gone through yet.
Include a clear progress bar for the patient to follow to help make the process as simple as possible. It’s usually best to put it right at the top of the page where the customer can’t miss it.
Personally, I get annoyed when I don’t know what step I’m in during a checkout process. This is not an evolution by any stretch of your imagination. This is a must-have!
Online shoppers will be able to see exactly what step they are on and what steps are going to come next. They will be able to see when they are officially done when they reach the final confirmation part of the progress bar.
3. Make it easy to go from store to your cart
There are a number of reasons why someone might want to go back to the store after they are in their cart.
One of the main reasons is that they want to buy something else, so you want them to go back! They could be giving you more money.
Make it easy to reassess the store from the cart and visa versa. If it’s too difficult to get back to the cart, the customer may change their mind about the order all together and just leave it — driving up your cart abandonment rate.
Reducing the friction for your customers to go from browsing and shopping to their cart is probably one of the easiest way to get a lower cart abandonment rate and increase cart-to-checkout percentages.
4. Provide multiple payment options
People like to have options when shopping, especially when it comes to how they pay. We’ve seen client cart abandonment rate decrease by 5% – 10% just by mentioning payment options in the cart.
A customer may think one payment method is safer than others. If you don’t offer this option, they may prefer not to shop with you at all.
Some of the popular payment methods to consider include:
- debit card
- card card
- prepaid card
- PayPal
- bank account
- check
- mobile payment methods
They may also be limited to only one or two payment options. You want customers to be able to pay you! Offer a variety of methods for them to choose from. In order for a lower cart abandonment rate, this is something to consider with your team.
Of course, you want to ensure that they are secure and reliable methods. If something happens to a customer’s payment, they may blame you instead of the people managing the payment.
5. Provide a guarantee
Customers like to know that if something goes wrong with their purchase, that they are buying from a company who trusts its products.
If you truly trust your product, you should be able to provide a guarantee. Offer a guarantee for a specified amount of time in the rare case that your customer gets a faulty product.
Your guarantee should be detailed and explain exactly in what circumstances a product will be replaced and what circumstances it will not.
You should also explain things like who will cover the delivery fees. Make the guarantee clear and easy to read on your website.
Assure that customers have read it before they are able to complete their purchase.
6. Explain delivery fees upfront
Customers don’t like to be surprised. Lay everything out on the table up front. You can do this by clearly stating delivery costs and additional fees on the main page to make your pricing transparent.
People will appreciate learning about your fees right away. If they aren’t comfortable with it, they can move on. You may also consider offering no delivery free or no delivery free over a certain purchase amount.
Even the word “free” can make someone feel like they are getting a deal.
The more open you are about your policies at the beginning of the transaction, the more likely people will actually be willing to complete the purchase.
7. Get and promote good reviews
It’s important to establish a good reputation from previous customers.
New customers will use these reviews to help learn about your company and how you do business.
Get customers to post reviews by making it easy for them on your website. You can also offer discounts for people who leave reviews (just make sure to find a way for them to prove it).
The more reviews you have, the more reputable you look, so get as many as possible. Get reviews on all the popular platforms.
Post positive reviews on your website and on social media for people to read. Y
You should also use negative reviews to make changes that will help you avoid other negative reviews.
8. Reach out to people who haven’t bought yet
You need to communicate with your customers who haven’t been able to make the plunge and actually buy your product.
Start by just reaching out to them with an email to remind them that they have items ready to be purchased. The simple reminder can be enough to get them back online to purchase.
After a couple of failed attempts, you mat even want to provide a discount to help encourage them to finally make the purchase.
9. Provide adequate customer service
Customers like to buy from a company with good customer service. They want to feel like you as a company have a plan in place to help them when they have a question or problem. That’s why you need to make customer service a priority in your business plan. Good customer service will improve your conversion rate.
To excel in customer service, you need to have a quick and easy way for customers to communicate with you. When customers call or email in, they should get a response quickly. This means you should hire enough employees to handle everything. Also, you want to ensure that the response the customer receives is kind and puts the customer and their needs first. Create clear return and complaint policies for customer service representatives to follow.
Wrapping It Up
Your cart conversion rate helps determine how much money you make from your online business. If you aren’t seeing the rates you’d like to see, you need to improve conversion rate.
You can improve conversion rate by instilling confidence in your customer, making your website easy to navigate, and offering stellar customer service.
When you improve conversion rate, you will see more sales and a more profitable business.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help you. Also, comment if you have any other suggestions on how to increase conversion rates!
