Biz Extra
Published: March 23, 2021 | Updated: 24th March 2021
If you run an ecommerce business, you’re all too familiar with abandoned carts, writes Natalka Antoniuk, Marketing Manager, Digital Storm.
This is when someone adds something to their basket but doesn’t go through with the purchase.
It’s annoying.
When people visit your website and add products to their basket, you want them to go through with the purchase.
We all want to increase our online sales.
As an ecommerce business owner, that’s probably up there with one of your biggest goals.
But most of the people on our site don’t go through with their purchase, so what are we going to do?
Around 3/4 of the people who visit your website will abandon their cart.
That’s a lot of people.
Surely, there is something you can do to prevent them from leaving?
If you want to increase online sales by reducing your abandon cart rate, you’ve come to the right place.
Digital Storm offers integrated design, development and marketing services to a variety of ecommerce clients.
We use our expertise in web design and user experience (UX) to reduce the abandonment rate across our clients’ websites.
Better still, our team uses digital marketing tactics to bring customers back to their cart to continue with their purchase.
In this article, we’ve laid out the top 5 reasons that your website visitors abandon their carts.
We’ve also given you some tips to reduce the abandon cart rate on your website.
If you have any questions or need help implementing these strategies, give Digital Storm a call.
There is no doubt about it, you need to be offering a guest checkout on your website.
Creating an account is time-consuming and requires visitors to hand over a lot of their personal information.
They don’t want to do that if they’re making a solo purchase.
Your checkout process needs to be simple and quick.
Visitors should be able to navigate from your homepage to the product they want and then checkout in as few steps as possible.
That means, no forcing them to create an account.
This is listed as the number one reason that people abandon carts.
If you want to improve your checkout experience and increase online sales, you need to simplify the process.
By all means, send a follow-up email to guests asking them if they want to create an account with you – but never make this compulsory.
Half of people surveyed in 2020 abandoned their cart because they were presented with additional shipping costs at checkout.
Imagine going through the whole process of finding a product, adding it to your cart and filling out your details only to find the cost is higher than you’d anticipated.
It’s annoying.
And people exit a website because of it.
There are some easy changes you can make to prevent this from happening.
Offering free shipping (even if it means increasing the price of your products) is a good way of giving the customer a transparent price from the beginning.
When that’s not an option, make sure that the shipping costs are clearly stated on the product page.
One of the benefits of online shopping is that you can get comparative prices at the click of a finger.
A lot of people are visiting your website to compare your prices with the rest of the market.
This often results in abandoned carts.
But what can you do about it?
Unfortunately, there is no easy fix.
Offering a lower price isn’t an option so you’ll need to find a different way to compete.
That’s where brand experience comes in.
86% of customers will pay more for a better customer experience.
Think about the customer journey on your website.
Is it an enjoyable experience?
Do you have a live chat for customers who need an immediate response?
Is the design clear and easy to navigate?
Are you serving dynamic content with product recommendation based on search history?
These are all tactics you can implement to enhance the customer experience and reduce your websites abandoned cart rate.
Every website is full of clues that tell the visitor whether or not your business is trustworthy.
The problem is, if a visitor doesn’t trust you, they won’t give you their money.
Carts are abandoned every day because websites are missing one or more of these vital clues.
To prevent this and reduce your abandonment rate, ensure you have an up-to-date SSL certificate.
This ensures the payments made on your site are secure.
You should also include product reviews, ratings or a stream of your Facebook and Google reviews.
This acts as evidence that you are who you say you are.
Finally, make sure your website is working.
I know that sounds like a pointless thing to say, but put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
If there’s a broken page, a button isn’t working or a shortcode is displaying instead of content, people won’t trust that your website is safe to shop with.
Finally, look at the ecommerce experience you’re currently offering.
Your customers have done the hunting, they’ve compared the prices and they’ve decided to shop with you.
Assuming you haven’t asked them to create an account or presented them with hidden shipping charges, they should be ready to make a purchase now.
But what are all your payment options?
Do you offer PayPal checkout?
Apple Pay?
What about a ‘buy it now’ button to speed up the process?
It’s 2021 and people aren’t walking around with their debit card in their pocket.
You need to make it easy for them to make the payment, otherwise, they’ll abandon their cart.
So what did you learn?
Obviously, these are the five most common reasons that people abandon their cart.
Fixing these issues on your website will improve your conversion rate and get you more sales.
But as you were reading, did you notice the one thing that they all had in common?
Reducing your abandonment rate is all about improving your website’s user experience.
It has to be fast.
It has to be easy.
And it has to be simple.
That’s the real secret to managing an ecommerce business.
As it turns out, it all comes back to the design and development of your website.
A great website will encourage visitors to go ahead with their purchase… but if you’ve got to the end of this article, the chances are you need a bit of help with yours.
If you want a UX professional to take a look at your ecommerce website and give you a breakdown of tactics that could reduce your abandon cart rate, get in touch with Digital Storm.
You’ll be amazed at what we can achieve together.
