With online shopping on the rise before and amid COVID, more and more businesses are jumping the bandwagon to reap the many benefits of having an online store. The retail sales, according to the stats, accounts for 14.1% of all retail sales globally. Statista forecasts that these figures are projected to grow a reach 22% in 2023. So, the potential is immense in this sector.
Now, realistically, having an online store, let’s say, built by a professional software development company in Houston is great. It means you have stepped into a lucrative marketplace and doing every possible marketing effort to generate brand awareness, traffic, conversions, and ultimately sales.
However, all of this, is easier said than done. Many ecommerce stores deal with cart abandonment and fail to address it properly in due time. The bright side to this tragic story is, that there are several ways to reduce cart abandonment rates. But first, let us understand what is meant by ‘cart abandonment’?
What is Cart Abandonment?
This is a term in ecommerce that is used to describe the process when a user adds items to the shopping cart or is halfway the checkout process but bails out before completing the purchase and making the order.
There are several ways to curb these ‘almost sales’ that could have been solidified if the checkout process was completed. However, cart abandonment is common and something every online store deals with.
How YOU can resolve your cart abandonment issues is where we come in presenting you with our tried and tested remedies that you can apply on your store as well.
Best Tips to Reduce Cart Abandonment of Your Online Store
1) Before they abandon your cart, entice them with a popup
These pop-ups are known as ‘exit-intent popups’; where you send customer a pop-up message before they are about to leave your page or have added items to their cart and are about to abandon it. These pop-up messages contain a deal or an offer to tempt them into making a purchase or complete the check-out process.
Exit-intent popups have been proven to be successful and have maximized conversions for eCommerce businesses.
These exit-intent popups can be installed on any page and on shopping carts including the checkout pages. If this fails to keep your potential customer on your website, then you can always follow-up with an email regarding their abandoned cart and try to work your magic there.
2) Make Cart Icon Visible at All Times
Online shopping cart is the most important part of your online store, so in order to make sure your customers or first-time visitors do not forget it – place the icon at a place where the cart is visible and easily accessible.
Majority of the people who are browsing and adding items to the cart aren’t necessarily looking to make purchases at the same day. They add to cart to save them for future consideration, when they visit again. This makes it even more important for you to keep the cart in sight. With WooCommerce, adding a customized cart icon to the menu bar is quite simple.
Take Amazon’s shopping cart for example. They have placed it on the top where it is visible and have also shown the quantity so that the visitors have an idea about the presence of items.
3) Provide Option for Guest Checkout
One of the best things that you can do for your customers is allow them to make purchases on your online store without having to sign-up first. If I take myself as an example, I am more than thrilled to be able to order food or items without having to make an account on their website.
So, from a customer’s stand, enabling guest checkout will fasten the process and lower your bounce rates. You can always ask for a sign-in after a successful checkout is made. Once the sale is made, they have the option to spend ample time on a sign-up process, rather than having to go through it in the middle of their online shopping session.
4) Fasten the Checkout Process
When designing your shopping cart experience, you need to make sure you are making it as simple and as fast as possible. If the process is too lengthy, they can always abandon your cart and site entirely and move on to the next eCommerce store.
Considering the fact that you are not just building for a great user experience, but you are also building to get an edge over your any competitors. So, whenever you are creating check-out pages and adding fields to be filled by the user – just ask yourself – how necessary are these. If users have to jump all these hoops to make their order, they might as well just go to the store physically and buy everything themselves.
There are two great steps that you can take in making the check-out process super-fast.
- Ask them for their email and credit card information only.
- Include a checkbox that takes users’ content on saving their details to spare them from entering them every time they are checking-out.
These two approaches where you ask less and required information along with the option to save their details, fastens the process allowing the users to not feel drained or annoyed – which usually leaves to cart abandonment.
Speaking of saving their sensitive details, such as their credit card details, we will end our cart abandonment tips with – security badges.
5) Display Your Security Badges
Whether you are a new contender in the area of eCommerce or a long-running business, either way, it is important to gain the trust of your customers by being transparent about your security badges. The customers, in order to make purchases, require to share their bank details which many feel uncomfortable about for obvious reasons.
This is why, authentic security badges instill a level of trust and confidence in your brand and reduces cart abandonment out of fear.
Pro Tip: Research about the security badges your target audience trusts and is familiar with and try to acquire those.
Once a customer is confident about the level of security your eCommerce website possesses including the fast and reliable check-out process – you are bound to lessen your cart abandonment issues and see a surge in sales. So, apply these tips and good luck!
