There are ways to solve the persistent and frustrating issue of shopping cart abandonment with the right efforts for greater customer satisfaction.
As an online retailer you haven’t left any page unturned. You have invested a considerable amount of effort in crafting an effective digital marketing strategy and an appealing e-commerce website. But if you are still grappling with customers visiting your website, choosing the products they want to buy and not completing the purchase, then there are a couple of things you need to know.
One, you are not alone. All e-commerce websites whether big or small face shopping cart abandonment. The Baymard institute has documented the average rate of abandonment of shopping carts as a whopping 68.53%.
And second, shopping card abandonment is mainly due to usability issues on the e-commerce website and is largely avoidable.
Why do visitors abandon their shopping carts?
Are there unpleasant surprises on your e-commerce website?
For a moment place yourself in your customer’s shoes. You have spent a good amount of time browsing a website, read reviews, compared different products and finally decided what you want. And when you finally proceed to the check-out page there is a change. There are unexpected shipping charges, lengthy forms or a complicated check-out process. How do you expect your customers to react?
Solution:
Facilitate account creation in a seamless way– Users do not really want to create an account and fill out lengthy forms for the same. This makes them weary and consequently pushes them towards cancelling the transaction. Easy login via Social plugins or Google or FB OAuth can help users create an account without any effort. It is not a good idea to ask your customers to enter an email address and then re-enter it for confirmation. You can validate the accuracy of the address as it is entered and auto complete (detect) the city, state, zip etc. for better customer satisfaction.
Show the final price as early as possible- Free shipping is a great form of advertising and you can work around to accommodate it by reducing your marketing budget a little. But if you still need to apply shipping charges and taxes in the ordering process, it is a good idea to show the final estimated price early. And incrementally add to the cost throughout the checkout process to avoid shopping cart abandonment.
Simple UI & Check-Out Process – 28% of the users leave the shopping cart because of a long check-out process. Ensure the pages are simple and not too heavy to load with a minimalized backend.
As a company you require the customer information, but you can ensure a simpler process to obtain only the information which is essential to complete the transaction. Ensure to retain the data and let people edit or save if needed. If the user has to re-enter details often, the chances of them leaving the cart is high. Make sure when a user clicks the browser back and forward button, the page loads correctly without any errors and no preloaded data is lost during navigation.
Is your e-commerce website mobile optimized?
Greg Sterling at Marketing Land says that 56 percent of consumer traffic is now from mobile devices as opposed to traditional desktop computers and the percentage increases each year. You can imagine if the web pages of your e-commerce website are not mobile friendly, how is the user experience going to be?
Solution:
Ensure speed and ease of navigation- Factors like fluidity of navigation, clarity of images, speed of page loading and compatibility with mobile devices are crucial and should be taken care of. They positively influence the propensity to buy and consequently increase the confidence on the site. You also need to keep in mind that a single second delay in page loading affects the conversion rate by 7%.
Have you built enough trust?
Despite the growing popularity of online buying, people are still wary of sharing their personal information and details freely with websites on the internet for obvious reasons. No one wants to take unnecessary risks.
Solution:
Have trusted logos on your e-commerce website- Did you know that 61% of customers do not make purchases if they don’t see a company’s logo on the site. Having a logo provides a sense of safety and credibility to the information being sent out and develops trust between you and your customer. All this adds to customer satisfaction.
What does your payment and refund policy look like?
Each customer has their own preferences and prejudices when it to payment options. Giving them their favourite payment option means securing their engagement with you. Also buying things online without actually checking them out in person always leaves room for the nagging doubt- What if I don’t like the product and need to return it? What about my money?
Solution:
Provide many payment options- Offering multiple payment options gives more room for users to select their preferred payment method and lets you convert a lot more. Some examples are credit/debit cards, PayPal, wallets, Amazon Pay, Google Pay etc.
Have a quick and transparent return policy- This is the first thing users look out for. All the information related to it needs to be clear and very transparent for adequate assurance that their money is not lost.
And there are times when despite of all the above efforts, it happens that people just change their minds. Maybe they were only browsing, or they found something they wanted somewhere else and decided against buying.
Shopping cart abandonment on your e-commerce website is a real issue, but it isn’t a challenge that cannot be overcome. It’s all about retargeting your marketing strategy and creating the best possible user experience that builds great customer satisfaction.
With Nabler, you can create an exploratory Test Charter with our team of Implementation Engineers and in-house developers, to define the scope and goal of all CRO tests. Keep testing newer hypotheses by running experiments which result in statistically significant outcomes. Determine why one variation worked over the other to offer a great customer experience on the website. Understand the behavior of users based on the number of sessions they create. Add relevant instrumentation to capture detailed customer interaction for every session. And measure user engagement by categorizing users into shared characteristics. Read about how we boosted revenue by 23% for a US based home furnishing Ecommerce store by decreasing shopping cart abandonment.
Reach out to us on info@nabler.com