What Are The Best Practices To Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates On An Ecommerce Store?

[Ali Amjad]

Hi, I have been struggling to find some good tips, tactics, and strategies to reduce cart abandonment rates on my e-commerce store. Should I implement exit-intent technology? Should I place attractive ad banners or deals throughout the sales funnel (customer journey)? How are you as store owners tackling this issue?

 

[Brennerz]

The first thing I would do is look at some data to try and guess who is leaving, is it a simple thing like... part of your website doesn't work on the users browser etc?

Perhaps if you were to provide a link someone may be able to point out what is going wrong.

Look at the pages they are dropping out on, are they adding things to the basket but not getting to the basket? do they get to the basket or checkout then quit? go on your site and think why would they drop off at that point.

 

[webprojectuk]

Could you give me some numbers to see how bad the situation is? i.e. how many customers out of 100 exit at the shopping cart page, how many go through the checkout process but fail to complete the sale. It might be normal, or it might be something which needs more work to fix.

 

[Idosell Shop]

There are two things to think over- why they drop baskets and how to limit this, another thing is what to do with already dropped- auto triggered messaging might be a good answer for the second one. For the first, there is no single answer, you can use free shipping over value, loyalty points, time limited offer to stop the customer from dropping the basket. It is good to run A/B tests to see what works better for your target group.

 

[Yeongwonhi]

It would be best to have a shop indicator just to see the progress at where they are at, and get a statistics for that - so you would determine where and why they are leaving carts at that point in time.

 

[Milliardo]

Cart abandonment can happen from time to time. There are ways though on how to prevent it, like for instance to check if your checkout process might be too long. People will find it hard to get their orders through soon if checkout might be too tedious for them. There are more tips out there, such as those on the blog at UnderstandingE.

 

[Idosell Shop]

Cart abandonment can happen from time to time. There are ways though on how to prevent it, like for instance to check if your checkout process might be too long. People will find it hard to get their orders through soon if checkout might be too tedious for them. There are more tips out there, such as those on the blog at UnderstandingE.

You can run A/B tests having two versions of checkout process-whatever convert better is the winner... The short checkout process is not applicable to all of the markets and customers- so better test what works for you.

 

[Vadym Gurevych]

Hi Ali!

I can share some tips with you in regards to improving conversion rates and, correspondingly, decreasing cart abandonment rates.

From my experience delivering and then supporting various shops, what matters to the end user is if they feel safe and secure on the website, completing the transaction. Naturally, the product (service?) and price matter a lot. But also if they feel their card details are safe, if they feel they will receive their goods from you. And of course the checkout process should be relatively simple and straight forward.

So, providing your products have good pictures and descriptions, providing the price is competitive, and providing you are not scaring them with unexpected fees (like shipping fee which some of the consumers may think is too high), you should look at the design, the look and feel of the shopping cart and checkout process.

It should be made very clear how to proceed to checkout from the shopping cart. It should be made clear (ideally) how much they will pay for delivery. It should be made clear that their data is safe with you. They like to see which payment methods are supported.

Next is the checkout. Make sure you don't ask for things you don't really need (like date of birth, for example). Some sites have a so called "one page checkout". Other sites prefer to have multiple pages, one per each set of questions (like contact details, shipping, billing addresses, etc). Experiment with those to find out which is your users' favourite.

My experience tells me the checkout (and shopping cart) should be free of various banners. Some of my clients even ask to completely remove all the design framework, leaving plain "black and white" design, to allow customers concentrate on the process.

Naturally make sure the SSL (https) is installed - makes people feel safe, even if they don't put their card details on your site.

Also, note that most of the Ecommerce solutions store cart contents in the DB for customers. So try chasing after abandoned carts, offer them some discount (if your margin is good) and see how they come back to complete their purchase. Use this opportunity to ask them why they didn't complete their purchase the first time. Experiment with price and especially shipping price - it seems to affect decisions sometimes.

Let me know if this helps, or if you have more questions. Cheers!

 

[stephen@wp]

One cited reason for cart abandonment is that the customer was "just browsing". Just browsing means that the customer did not have a specific product in mind, but rather simply wanted to see what there was to offer. There are a couple of options retailers have in approaching this type of visitor. Choose a solution having capability to store information entered on the main site, allowing the merchant to stay in contact with the customer after the cart has been abandoned.

 

[FrontierMan]

What are your Delivery Charges, are they high, are you trying to make money there, also can they check out as a guest rather than having to open an account to purchase
I walk away from these two , also so if you have pop-ups

 

[Idosell Shop]

One cited reason for cart abandonment is that the customer was "just browsing". Just browsing means that the customer did not have a specific product in mind, but rather simply wanted to see what there was to offer. There are a couple of options retailers have in approaching this type of visitor. Choose a solution having capability to store information entered on the main site, allowing the merchant to stay in contact with the customer after the cart has been abandoned.

You can set up several triggers- personalized information can be delivered to "basket droppers" additional sweeteners can be offered- in example double loyalty program points, free delivery etc.
Sales Manago or Chimp Mail could be a good choice- we have chosen integration of our platform with Sales Manago and it works for us- not having much experience with Chimp Mail- might be also good and effective. With triggered messaging you can also proceed A/B tests to check which convert the best for you.

 

[Edith@TerraNetwork]

I found customer service communication a good way to see what's going wrong online, ie when a customer phones or live chats & mentions an issue they had, ie a query that they couldn't easily find an answer for or a checkout option they didn't understand.

 

[antropy]

Should I implement exit-intent technology?

Yep, add some popups that say "Are you sure?" whenever someone tries to navigate away

 

[Richard Edwards]

Where are your customers coming from? What advertising are you doing? Are you making it clear what your shipping costs are before people get half way through the checkout - lots of people leave when the price jumps up because of shipping.

If you sell £5 items and people only find out in the checkout its £7 to ship it, no way will they buy it. You are just seeing it as abandoned carts instead of a bounce rate, which is down to business strategy rather than improving the checkout.

I've been in e-commerce for a decade and hate nothing more than people using desperate measures to solve their abandoned carts:

Popups when you close the browser - Your customer has already decided they don't want to buy from you, DO NOT pester them. It just ensures they won't come back. Unless you offer a discount in these popups, customers will use it, but only if its is substantial. 5% off likely wont cut it if they have seen it cheaper somewhere else, odds are its more than 5% cheaper. Then these can work.

Sending out abandoned basket emails - I have a few clients who use these kind of emails. The problem is you need to ensure the email is well worded. Simply throwing an email saying what they have in the basket a day later is a waste of time - they'll have already bought it elsewhere. Maybe send an email an hour later if they have left the checkout process and not come back, again offer a worth while discount, or a free delivery upgrade (this may be the reason they moved on, 5 days delivery is not good enough in todays markets)

Make the checkout easy. Give a shipping cost up-front. A lot of retailers I work with have overly complex shipping rates, because they have been given a complex matrix from their shipping supplier saying 3.4-5.6kg = £4.56. Don't make it this messy for your customers. Find out the average order weight and use that as a basis of a fixed shipping cost, with maybe a higher and lower rate. More than this just confuses customers. Alongside this, use these values to show an Estimated shipping cost on the cart. Don't force people to sign in or go past the cart stage to know your shipping rates.

 

[Richard Edwards]

Yep, add some popups that say "Are you sure?" whenever someone tries to navigate away

Prime example of what to NEVER do. If they want to leave and they are sure, they sure as hell will never come back. Pester your potential customers and you will just be seen as that site which annoyed them, they won't care if you are cheaper anymore.