What is Cart Abandonment?
An abandoned cart is a scenario where the customer adds products to the shopping cart on an eCommerce store but leaves the website without completing the purchase. In simpler words, the customer abandons the shopping cart without finalizing the transaction.
This is a common phenomenon and a major pain point of eCommerce businesses nowadays. Statistics show over 70% of customers leave their purchases incomplete.
The reason behind abandoned shopping carts may vary from an unsatisfactory deal to lack of confidence in the product. However, there’s more to it.
Now that you understand what is shopping cart abandonment, let’s move on to understanding what is cart abandonment rate.
What is Cart Abandonment Rate?
Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of customers who add products to the virtual shopping cart on an eCommerce site but leave the purchase incomplete. The cart abandonment rate is a key indicator of how many potential customers were interested in buying your product but left the website without buying anything compared to the number of total carts created.
The average cart abandonment rate is over 69% and has grown exponentially over the years. Knowing your eCommerce cart abandonment rate is crucial. It can help improve strategies and optimize the shopping experience, simplify the checkout process, gradually reduce shopping cart abandonment rates, and ultimately improve conversion rates.
Top Reasons Why Users Abandon Carts?
As we have stated, a huge number of users abandon shopping carts for various reasons, and understanding these reasons is crucial for e-commerce businesses to optimize their processes and improve conversions. Here are some top reasons why users abandon carts:
1. Unexpected Additional Costs
Customers value transparency and appreciate being fully informed before making a purchasing decision. Discovering unexpected costs during the checkout process can significantly deter consumers. To minimize cart abandonment, it’s crucial for businesses to communicate all costs associated with the purchase upfront clearly. These additional charges may include delivery fees, packaging charges, or other miscellaneous expenses, which can lead to cart abandonment as they can significantly alter the perceived value of the purchase.
2. Mandatory Account Creation
An easy checkout process is something that consumers highly appreciate. Many consumers prefer making purchases from a quest account rather than creating an account. Making account creation mandatory disrupts the concept of a smooth customer journey. Account creation somewhat feels like a commitment to some users, and some might also not want to share their information like their phone number or other personal details. Keeping account creation mandatory can be a barrier and lead to cart abandonment.
3. Lack of privacy or trust
The eCommerce world is filled with options. Customers seek for brands that can stand out and present themselves with authenticity and transparency. This need for trust in brands can come through social proof and respect for data privacy.
By integrating reviews and testimonials, or user-generated content for your products you can establish trust and help your customers to have faith in your brand. Another way to achieve this trust is by providing your users clear information about your return policies and data sharing. Lack of information is another crucial reason why consumers abandon carts.
4. Complicated Checkout Process
A complicated or cumbersome checkout process has proven to be a prominent reason behind cart abandonment. When customers encounter a lengthy checkout process, they may become frustrated and opt to abandon their shopping carts. This can be due to excessive steps such as identity verification or an overload of information fields to fill out. The more time and effort required to finalize the purchase, the more likely users are to abandon their carts.
5. Poor Website Performance
One of the major culprits behind cart abandonment is poor website performance. When users encounter slow loading times, unresponsive pages, or other technical glitches while navigating an e-commerce site, it significantly dampens their shopping experience. Frustrated by delays and inefficiencies, visitors are more likely to abandon their carts and seek a smoother shopping journey elsewhere.
How To Reduce Cart Abandonment & Bring Back Lost Customers?
Taking proactive steps to address the identified causes of cart abandonment, as mentioned in the preceding sections, can significantly impact your e-commerce business.
Now that you’re aware of the reasons behind cart abandonment, let’s talk about solutions.
By integrating tried and tested strategies, you can considerably decrease your cart abandonment rate, and you might even experience an improvement in conversions.
Here are 5 strategies to prevent cart abandonment:
1. Optimize Your Website
Your users can be anywhere, accessing your website through various sources. Especially now, when over 81% of consumers prefer shopping via mobile phones. This growing number of mobile users also proves the criticality of creating a website that is comfortable, easily accessible, and smooth.
2. Make Shopping Experience Social
Social shopping is gaining popularity and becoming people’s go-to way of making purchases. Customers like to be engaged and communicated with differently. By integrating social content and user-generated content into your eCommerce, brands can improve customers’ shopping journey and turn it into an engaging experience.
3. Stay Transparent
Staying transparent about product details and any major information associated with the product is a great strategy to establish trust among potential customers. This can include information about any extra charges such as delivery costs, packing charges, etc.
4. Use High-Quality Images
Online shopping is much about how you showcase your products. Using high-quality content on your website is a great strategy to help your customers visualize your products in action. This high-quality content doesn’t necessarily have to be pre-posed and professionally shot content, utilizing user-generated content can be an excellent way to showcase your products.
5. Invest In Shoppable Emails
Emails are a great way to bring back lost customers. You can rekindle a connection with your customers by reminding them of their incomplete purchases through emails. This can be possible, especially through shoppable emails. By integrating shoppable emails, you can improve personalization and enable your customers to take quick action and make purchase decisions.
Moreover, you can further improve your conversions by integrating a series of enhancements, such as integrating shoppable content into your product pages to improve customer trust or including a shoppable social bio on your social media profile to make shopping more accessible.
Conclusion
Cart abandonment is a crucial pain-point of e-commerce businesses nowadays. This phenomenon is an outcome of various factors combined – including reasons like lack of brand trust or something as simple as a tedious checkout process.
With efficient strategies, businesses can redeem their position among potential customers and considerably decrease cart abandonment rate.
