Tips to reduce cart abandonments

How to reduce Abandoned Carts?

You spent a lot of money advertising your product, getting the customer to visit your website, convinced them that it's a great product and made them add the items to cart. But then just as the cup goes to the lip, you lose the sale. How painful is that? How do you get customers to not abandon their carts?

How high is your cart abandonment rate?

Before we set about solving the problem, we need to understand the extent of the problem. To measure your cart abandonment rate, you need to know “Out of 100 carts that are made by customers on your website, how many complete their purchase?”

Cart abandonment rate varies by industries. For example, a cruise service provider could see an abandonment rate as high as 98% whereas groceries could see as low as 50%. Retail industry on an average faces 70% cart abandonment rate.

Why do customers abandon carts?

Now that we know that abandoned carts is an industry wide problem, let's try to understand why this happens in the first place. Understanding the “why” would help us find solutions to the problem and thereby reduce the number of abandoned carts. I have broadly classified the customer reasons into 4 broad categories:

1. Uncertainty on the actual value of the item

• Is there a coupon code I can find for this cart?
• Is this the best deal I can get? Will this item get cheaper later?
• I am still not sure about this purchase. What if I don’t like it when I receive it?

2. Uncertainty on the service

• When will I actually get these items? Will it arrive on time?
• Not sure how easy it will be to return the items if I need to.
• What if I need some support post purchase?
• Why is the final amount different from what I saw earlier?

3. Poor Shopping experience

• Woah! This is more tedious than filing my tax returns!
• I don’t have my preferred payment method here
• Is it my internet or is this app really buggy?

4. External Factors

• I am just building a list of things I am interested in. I might buy them later?
• Faulty internet
• Credit card issues

Amongst the reasons listed above, the top reasons that contribute towards maximum cart abandonment are:

1. Number of steps required to checkout (poor shopping experience)
2. Issues related to shipping (uncertainty on service)
3. Price certainty (uncertainty on value of item)

How to reduce cart abandonments?

Improving Shopping experience on your website or app

1. Reduce the effort required to complete checkout: More the number of steps required for a customer to complete the checkout - higher the chance of customers dropping out between each of them.
2. Introduce Guest checkouts: Don’t force customers to create an account with you if they don’t prefer. Enable guest checkouts. However, incentivize them with additional benefits (such as loyalty points that they would miss out on) so that they take the additional effort to create an account.
3. Autofill details wherever information is available: If it's a returning customer, most details required for a checkout would already be available and can be prefilled. Even for new customers, using available data (such as location through maps integration) and usual customer preferences, we can minimize requiring customers to manually input data for every field.
4. One click payment: Enabling a single click “purchase now” option from the product page and using payment tech such as Apple pay which makes payment easy can go a long way in crunching the number of steps required to checkout.
5. Improve page load times and app responsiveness: The ideal load time for an app should be 2 seconds. Each additional second it takes for your app to load or transition from one page to the other, the drop offs increase. Monitor bounce rates at different stages and identify whether any shopping stages are having sub-optimal customer shopping experience.

Assuring certainty of service

1. Clarity on shipping policy: Industry studies clearly show that adding a delivery fee surreptitiously to the checkout page increases the chances of customers dropping the cart like a hot potato. It is ideal to provide free shipping where possible. In case you choose to charge the customer for shipping, let the customer know upfront on what that policy entails. Does your shipping fee vary by shipping location or cart threshold? What does the final amount look like including shipping? Customers don’t like seeing surprises at the last stage.
2. Clarity on delivery time: Alongside cost of shipping, customers value accuracy and speed of delivery. Letting customers choose their delivery slot adds value to customers. Even if your fulfillment and delivery solution doesn’t allow customers to choose delivery slots, promising an accurate timeline of when they can expect their delivery is critical. Technology enabled fulfillment solutions have made this an easy to plugin service to most online businesses.
3. Clarity on return policy: Emphasizing a clear, hassle-free return policy goes a long way in building trust with the customers and assuring them that they wouldn’t be stuck with an unhappy purchase - no matter what.
4. Clarity on support provided: Letting your customers know that your relationship with them continues way beyond the purchase through easily accessible support options can improve certainty of service beyond the purchase cycle.

Reaffirmation of the purchase decision

1. Deal affirmation: Most often customers drop the cart in search of a “hidden” coupon code that will sweeten the deal. Once the customers goes off on that search, their attention gets vied upon by multiple other distractions. To prevent this, its best that all available deals are presented to the customer with their eligibility criterion. This can assure the customers that they are not missing out on any potential discounts they could otherwise get.
2. Value affirmation: Assure the customers on the value of the item through

• Highlighting the savings made by completing the purchase. Delaying the purchase could run the risk of the offer not being available or product itself not being available to the customer.
• Emphasizing on quality of the item by highlighting product ratings / reviews. Other quality marks like warranty / guarantee policies can also help. Customer is already interested in buying the item. All that they need is an additional assurance of their purchase decision.

Retargeting lost customers

Despite the steps taken to reduce cart abandonments, you would still have a good share of customers who ended up not completing the purchase for factors beyond your control. However, these are potential customers who might convert with an additional nudge. You could keep providing those additional nudges through retargeting ads, app push messages, emailers, text campaigns etc. Each returning customer takes one abandoned cart to the cash register.

Excerpt from: How to reduce Abandoned Carts? – Ashick Ali