How to Supercharge Your Checkout to Drop Your Cart Abandonment Rate

Introduction:

Your online shop can be a fantastic revenue stream, because you have tons of opportunities for growth at your disposal. By the way, if you don’t have your own site, we offer competitive web design services.

However, it is not all a bed of roses, because there are several challenges as well, but those with hunger for success will be willing to confront and overcome them.

That is why we have released this article, to deal with one of the biggest challenges that many online shop owners face, cart abandonment.

You see it over and over again, visitors filling their carts with items, they seem ready to buy and then nothing. Nada. They just abandon the cart and take your hopes away…

A common situation for many in the eCommerce world, but today you are going to learn how to deal with it, so you can reduce your cart abandonment rate with these proven strategies.

A Big Problem in the eCommerce World

(Stats and Insights):

It is much bigger than you think, and according to stats, the cart abandonment for most online retailers goes from 60% up to 80%. A lot, as you can see, and yes, that includes many of the biggest players in the field.

There are many studies around this phenomenon, and in average, the cart abandonment rate is 69.89%. Still, a lot.

It varies depending on the category, and here you have some estimations provided by Rejoiner:

• Medical:25%
• Consumer Electronics:26%
• Automotive:92%
• Sports: 45%
• Apparel:75%
• Beauty: 62%

From this list, the businesses in the consumer electronics sector have the hardest time with shopping cart abandonment. You are going to understand why in the next section of this article.

A problem affects online retailers in every country of the world. For example, in the UK, it provokes more than £18 billion in lost sales every single year. Now you have an idea on how much money it makes businesses lose.

That is only for the UK, because if we talk about businesses worldwide, it costs online shop from 2 to 4 trillion dollars every year. That is a lot of money, and yes, it is also affecting you. Unfortunately, these stats are only getting worse with the passing of time.

Nonetheless, now you will discover how to protect your store against and how to take advantage of the rise of cart abandonment, so you can keep an edge over your competitors.

Now that you have seen how big of a problem it is, it is time to understand why customers abandon their shopping carts, before we go into the solutions you need to implement in your website.

Why Your Customers Abandon Their Cart

and Run Away With Your Money:

There are tons of reasons on why your customers might leave your website without concreting a purchase:

• Complicate and long checkout process (too many details to fill)
• The site requires the user to create an account to complete the checkout
• Lack of trust for entering financial info (credit card or logging to PayPal, for example) – Payment Security
• Lack of variety of payment methods
• Excessive extra costs like shipping, fees and taxes
• No express delivery option
• Slow website with bugs (technical issues)
• No immediate customer support
• No coupon code
• The user was only researching and comparing prices.

As you can see, there are many reasons why your visitors abandon your cart.

While it is true that many users do it because they are only researching and comparing prices, the vast majority of reasons have a solution, and in the next section you are going to learn how.

You need to accept that many visitors are not really buying, and that is a reality. Instead, you should do your best to maximize your conversion rate with the users who are willing to spend money in your business, and that is why you need to optimize your checkout.

How Fixing This Variable Will Boost Your Business to the Next Level:

If you are already getting traffic, then you should not only focus on generating more qualified traffic (which is essential), because you also need to make the most out of it.

In simple words, you need to optimize your conversion rate, and reducing your cart abandonment rate is one of the best ways to do it, because that way, you will allow more customers to complete their purchase.

You will be able to generate more money from the traffic you already receive. As simple as that. You can use this new money to improve and grow your business by investing in marketing, improving User Experience, investing in Customer Support, testing new products and more. The sky is the limit.

Now it is time to finally see how you can make this happen. Let’s see!

How to Stop Your Customers from Abandoning Their Cart

(Simple yet Powerful Fixes):

You already know the problems. Let’s check the solutions one by one.

Keep Your Checkout Easy and Simple:

People hate to fill too many details. The longer the checkout, the higher the chances of customers to abandon their shopping cart.

The answer is simple, keep it short, sweet and easy. Only ask for strictly necessary information. The less you ask, the better. Your customers will love it.

Now, you should also improve navigation, making it easy for users to complete their purchase as soon as possible. The process from adding the products to their cart to completing the checkout should take as few steps as possible.

Guest Checkout Is Mandatory:

Surprisingly not, many users will abandon your website if you require them to create an account for completing their purchase. It is annoying, unnecessary and it is damaging your business more than you can imagine.

Make it possible for your customers to concrete their purchase without having to create an account, and of course, keep the checkout process as simple as possible.

If you need proof that this works, you only need to know that 80% of eCommerce brands in the USA offer guest checkouts (source: https://econsultancy.com/blog/10355-eight-out-of-top-10-us-retailers-offer-guest-checkout/). If it works for them, then it will work for you. You will see a drop in your cart abandonment rate.

Pay Keen Attention to Payment Security:

If your customers cannot trust your website, then you can bet on it that they will not willing to concrete their purchase. You need to inspire trust and confidence, and hence, it is essential to pay special attention to the payment security aspect of your business.

There are several ways by which you can boost your payment security score:

• Add plenty of social proof like testimonials, reviews and ratings
• Use endorsements to reinforce social proof
• Provide complete contact information: business name, email, phone, social media and address
• Have a section with photos and descriptions about you and your team (include photos and bios)
• Add badges of security (ex: PayPal, Google Trusted Stores, etc.)

Make your customers feel safe and they will have an easier time trusting your website, and thus, completing their purchase. As simple as that.

Improve Your Website:

If your website is slow, has many bugs and crashes often, then you should not be surprised that your cart abandonment rate only keeps growing.

The SEO Heroes answer is simple, improve your website by fixing all the technical issues that affect it, improve your load speed and provide a better UX.

First, get a decent web hosting plan that can offer you optimal speed. Instead of trying to cut down costs, stick to decent companies like A2 and Cloudways, which offer excellent speed, plenty of resources and maximum security.

Second, update all of your plugins and CMS. Make sure everything is updated, so your website can run smoothly.

Third, compress all of your images and documents possible, because it will allow your website to load faster.

Fourth, audit your website and hire a specialized web professional to fix all the technical issues present in your store.

Fifth, make sure that your website is mobile friendly, because a vast majority of your customers will buy using their phones, tablets and other mobile devices. You cannot afford to ignore them, because they are a very important segment.

Do not be afraid to invest in a proper professional to handle this for you in case you are not very tech-savvy, because it will pay off.

Simple tricks that will make more customers buy from you. Put them in practice and see the results!

Disclose All Extra Costs:

If you want to maximize your conversions, then you need to be as transparent as possible. Let your customers know how much they will have to pay in the end, and make it detailed.

Excessive costs will reduce your conversions, so try to make them as low as possible, as it will pay off.

A little hack to generate more conversions is to include the shipping cost in the original price of the product and offer “free shipping”, because digital shoppers value it a lot. This is something that many online shops do with great success.

Include Express Shipping:

Shipping is a big deal for tons of customers, and including a express option will only help your business.

If you can help them to get their products much sooner, then you will generate more conversions, especially because many customers wait until the last time to buy gifts for special seasons, and the unique way to get their products on time is with express shipping.

You will bring your customers a big reason to concrete their purchase, because you can deliver on time.

As a cool tip, you can try to add reviews that state how fast your shipping is, because it will encourage your customers to stay in your site and buy your products.

Offer Exclusive Discounts/Coupons:

By offering limited-time coupons to your customers during the checkout process, you will be able to drop your cart abandonment rate even more.

Profit from the scarcity, bring your customers value and see how much your conversions increase.

We know that a discount will cut some of your profit, but it helps you to generate tons of new sales, then it is definitively worth it.

However, we recommend you to take care of the rest before applying this tip, because this is the icing of the cake instead of a fundamental solution.

Bring a Stellar Customer Support Experience:

What if your customer has doubts or questions during the checkout?

What if they need immediate support with a last-minute issue?

Do they have an easy way to get immediate customer support?

If not, then what are you waiting for? Because it plays a huge role in increasing your conversions, and can be a great ally for super-charging your checkout.

By adding live chat, you can assist them in real time and bring them a superb customer support experience, which will help you to increase your conversion rate.

Last-minute objections and questions can make your customers leave your website, and live chat is the perfect antidote. Another way to deal with them is to supplement your live chat with a proper Knowledge Base, so your customers can help themselves in a fast manner.

If you want to operate all of your customer support from the same place, then you can use a Help Desk software like Zendesk, Kayako or LiveChat. However, this topic requires an article on its own, which will release soon.

Conclusion:

Now you have all the tools for optimizing your checkout to reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate. Apply these strategies and you will be able to experience superb results.

If it is a problem that is really affecting your website, know how you the causes and how you can solve them, so you can grow your business to the next level.

If you want more help, then feel free to write a comment below and we will do our best to answer your questions and bring you actionable solutions.

We hope you enjoyed this article, and now it is time to work on your store, so you can start seeing the results as soon as possible!