7 Steps to Reduce Abandoned Carts
Over 69% of all carts are abandoned according to a Baymard Institute study. A large portion of cart abandonments are a natural consequence of how customers browse e-commerce websites - window shopping and price comparison are part of what we call the buyer consideration phase - and some of your abandoned carts are always going to be unavoidable.
But what can you do to lower your cart abandonment rate?
Here are seven easy to implement fixes:
Be transparent about shipping costs
Shipping shock is a thing. Reduce unexpected costs by offering flat rate or free shipping that is widely communicated on your site before the customer hits checkout using an announcement bar or pop up.
To avoid shipping shock, consider increasing your product pricing to factor in your average shipping cost or create a shipping threshold - e.g free shipping for orders over $150 - and skip this barrier altogether.
Offer multiple payment options
Apple Pay & Shopify pay allows your customers to access their cards at the touch of a button and some customers will have strong opinions about the types of after payment services you use and the frequency offered by those providers - fortnightly or weekly.
Allow customers to save their carts
Sometimes people DO need some time to consider their purchase so allow them to save their cart and set up email reminders to ensure they come back to finish their purchase
Remove friction between your cart & the rest of your website
Ensure the user can get to and from their cart easily. You want it to be easy to checkout and complete their purchase but also easy to go back into your store and continue to shop. A good way to check that this is optimised is to book a User Experience Audit with an e-commerce specialist like Renee from Running in Heels.
Use high quality project imagery + add video
Ensure your imagery is high quality + extras for experts is to include video to allow customers to really get their head around your product and ensure they know exactly what they do and how they work.
Write detailed product descriptions
This is a trick often missed by busy small business owners but your product descriptions are an integral part of creating trust between you and your customer and they need to be spot on. Include measurements, personal recommendations and a link to a like product that they may also be interested in.
Re-target your website visitors with Facebook Ads
Finally buy yourself another chance to complete the sale by using retargeting to catch anyone who may have been interrupted mid purchase or not quite ready to buy.
A Facebook Catalogue Sales Campaign or Conversion Campaign is perfect for retargeting people who added to cart (or those who viewed an item) and can even display the exact product they were looking at + your other best selling items. Learn how to do this in my Facebook Foundation for Small Business Owners course.