How to reduce cart abandonment

Online retailers and eCommerce businesses can only close a sale if customers complete their orders. For these companies, nurturing a lead until they are ready to make a purchase, only to face shopping cart abandonment – can be a devastating prospect. However, there are steps you can take to minimize the chances of this happening. We are going to show you how to reduce cart abandonment and improve the shopping experience for your customers.

What is shopping cart abandonment?

Before businesses can close a sale, they first need to interest a wide audience for their products. The most efficient way to do this is to get the help of top digital marketing agencies New York. However, even once you do manage to spark the interest of the general audience and get them to visit your website, a sale is still not a sure thing. You then have to offer customers an appealing value proposition. Unfortunately, even after potential customers reach the checkout stage it’s possible that something can happen to get them to change their minds.

Shopping cart abandonment occurs when users place items in their online cart but leave your website before completing the purchase. You can calculate your rate of abandonment based on the number of users who create a cart versus the total number of successful purchases. Obviously, you’ll want to reduce cart abandonment since it represents an opportunity cost. If your website has a high conversion rate and a high rate of abandonment, this could indicate problems in the checkout stage.

Here’s how to reduce cart abandonment:

1. Simplify checkout

Do everything you can to make the checkout process easy and streamlined. Imagine visiting a website and liking one of its products, and when you click on the ‘proceed to checkout’ button you are taken to an incredibly complex form that you need to go through. At that point, you’ll probably start to wonder how much you wanted that product in the first place.

Users generally make online purchases based on emotional decisions, not logical reasoning or rational need. You’ll want to strike while the iron is hot. Therefore you should make completing a purchase a simple affair that requires just a few additional clicks.

2. Improve site speed

Although website speed is traditionally considered to be one of the factors that influence SEO, it can also have an impact on cart abandonment. Any improvements on your website should also have a beneficial effect on the rate of completed purchases. You can hire a professional New York SEO consultant to help you optimize your site and reduce cart abandonment. Improving page speed can also lead to more purchases from the same customer since they won’t need to spend as much time on checkout.

3. Be upfront about all costs

Depending on the type of products or services you are selling, there could be additional associated costs or surcharges which are later added to a purchase. Waiting until customers reach the checkout to inform them can negatively influence customer behavior. You should be upfront about any additional costs, and let customers know in advance what they can expect.

4. Help customers calculate shipping

Some companies have multiple checkout pages through which users need to progress before the purchase is finalized. If you have shipping costs calculated on a separate checkout page, users might feel tricked. Unfortunately, this is sometimes hard to avoid, especially if you are using a third-party shipping service. In those situations, you should try to help users calculate shipping or at least offer estimates based on the products in their shopping cart.

5. Show the progress of the checkout

Endless checkout pages can frustrate your customers. Make sure to let customers know how close they are to completing the purchase. If you request information from them in several stages, you should include progress indicators on the checkout page. However, we recommend just requiring a minimal amount of information.

6. Offer promo codes and discounts

In order to stay competitive in the online landscape, most businesses are attempting to lure customers with promises of deep discounts. When users arrive at your website, they might get frustrated if they don’t see any immediate discounts or offers and they have to pay full price. Experts for PPC services NYC actually recommend including discounts and special offers in your advertising. You can simply have a first-time buyer code for anyone who clicks on a PPC ad and then immediately completes a purchase.

7. Include all the major payment options

Another cause for cart abandonment could be that users reach checkout, only to find out that their preferred means of payment aren’t supported. Besides the obvious, like including all of the major credit cards, your online storefront could also accept payments through direct bank transfer or digital wallets. Remove any unnecessary obstacles for users who wish to purchase your products. Make it easy for them to actually send you money.

8. Have product thumbnails

We recommend including product thumbnails on the checkout page. This can be especially important for users who plan to go back and forth from your store to their shopping cart. If they add multiple products to their cart, thumbnails could help them do a quick review with just a quick glance. Social media marketing NYC professionals suggest that you have a holistic. Use the same product thumbnails for your website, checkout page, and social media accounts. This can reduce confusion and let users know that they are actually buying the products they wanted in the first place.

9. Enable live chat during checkout

It’s quite possible that users get confused or run into an issue during checkout. You can offer them support on the checkout page by giving them the option to directly contact a sales rep. Your employees can any questions customers may be having and help them complete their purchases.

To summarize

We’ve given you 9 useful tips on how to reduce cart abandonment and increase the number of successful sales. Now it’s up to you to make the necessary changes to your website and set company-wide goals to actively help customers complete their purchases.