How to Reduce Cart Abandonment
Tips to Convert More Online Sales
For online retailers, shopping cart abandonment is a significant challenge. This is when customers add products to their carts, but leave the website without completing the purchase.
The average cart abandonment rate is nearly 70%, so don’t sweat it too much if your cart abandonment rate is high. The reasons for cart abandonment are numerous, and they can vary from customer to customer. However, if you are able to convert even a fraction of these lost sales, there is potential to massively increase your revenue. You worked hard through production and marketing to get customers to your website—don’t let them get away after they’ve put products in their cart!
Simplify the Checkout Process
One of the most common reasons for cart abandonment is a complicated checkout process. Customers don’t want to spend a lot of time filling out forms or providing unnecessary information. This is especially true now that over 40% of e-commerce sales come from mobile devices.
Make the checkout process as simple as possible. This includes removing extraneous form fields, allowing guest checkout, and setting up your website to autofill for repeat customers.
QUICK TIP: Include an option to create an account after checkout is complete instead of requiring customers to sign up before.
Offer Multiple Payment Options
Another factor that can lead to cart abandonment is limited payment options. Customers have different preferences when it comes to paying for their purchases. Picture a brick and mortar store that accepts credit cards, debit cards, Apple Pay, or cash. Online retailers should follow this example and offer multiple payment options, including credit cards, debit cards, Paypal, and other online payment methods.
Take a look at adding different payment gateways to your website. Third party applications like Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Square, and PayPal autofill customers’ payment information and convert more sales more quickly. Additionally, PayPal uses end-to-end encryption and is a highly-secure financial service. Put security-minded customers at ease by offering PayPal as an option at checkout.
QUICK TIP: Display trust badges: symbols that indicate that a website is secure. These badges can include SSL certificates, payment security badges, and customer review badges.
Provide Free Shipping
High shipping costs can be a major turnoff for customers. If the shipping cost is too high, customers may abandon their carts and look for alternative retailers that offer shipping—like Amazon. Retailers should consider offering free shipping for orders above a certain amount or for loyal customers that are subscribed to an email mailing list. Another option is to offer a code that can be applied at checkout. Customers feel like they’re saving money (and some might even forget to enter the code)!
Alternatively, you can offer flat-rate shipping to make it easier for customers to calculate the total cost of their purchase before adding products to their cart.
Finally, if the above suggestions are impossible to implement, examine your profit margin. Consider raising your prices by a small percentage so you can lower your shipping costs. Most consumers will gladly pay a premium for a product if it means they are getting “free shipping”.
Send Abandoned Cart and Browse Abandonment Emails
Many customers abandon their carts because they get distracted or forget about their purchases. Sometimes all a customer needs is a little extra nudge to complete a purchase. Retailers can send abandoned cart emails to remind customers about the items in their cart. You can even include a coupon to help convert more sales.
Abandoned cart emails can be set up in a variety of ways. A clean, streamlined way to establish abandoned cart emails is with an email service like Klaviyo. As a Klaviyo Master Partner, Meerkat Media Group is intimately familiar with all the capabilities of these automated emails. The best part is these automations run in the background, so you can literally make money while you sleep.
Make Every Add to Cart Count
If you’re looking for help to reduce your cart abandonment, Meerkat Media Group has you covered! With experience in e-commerce, hospitality, food, and more, our team can help you reach the audience you want in the way you want. Contact us today to take your digital marketing to the next level.
