Cart Abandonment Rate: How to improve it

How is Cart Abandonment Rate Calculated?

Online shopping has brought a completely new revolution in the internet world. But at the same time, not everyone buys the product after adding it to their shopping cart. Despite the best plans being in place, the users visit the site, check out the things they like, and just close the app or website without buying. This is known as cart abandonment.

An abandoned cart is the one where the customers add an item to the shopping cart of the e-commerce website but just leave before they complete the transaction. Albeit it is impossible to stop this from happening, there are ways to improve their e-commerce experience to keep them from abandoning the shopper’s cart.

Calculating the cart abandonment rate is pretty simple. It is the percentage of online users who add items to the shopping cart but they abandoned the cart without buying the product. You just have to follow an easy formula to find the cart abandonment rate.

Card Abandonment Rate: 1- (Number of Customers Completing the Transactions/Number of Customers Adding Items to the Cart)

The abandoned shopping cart rate is one of the biggest obstacles an e-commerce store needs to overcome. A survey had shown that the average rate of customers abandoning the shopping cart before making their purchase is 81%. So, a majority of the e-commerce website lose about 1/3 of the shopping carts before the users convert to buying the product.

It is the travel sector that has the highest rate of abandonment. The number stands at almost 85%. So, things are quite bleak when it comes to e-commerce marketers.

5 Easy Steps to Reducing Consumer Abandonment

How to Improve Cart Abandonment Rate?

You can use the abandoned cart rate to measure how well you are standing up against your competitors in the industry. Take an inventory of the marketing tactics without passing judgment on what is working and what is not.

With the abandoned shopping cart rate, you can gauge the behavior of the customers and the visitors. If you want to reduce the cart abandon rate, here are a few tips you can follow.

1. Try Establishing Trust in the Transaction Forms

At times, online retailers take transaction forms like a formality to complete the sales process. However, this should not be the case. The transaction forms are an important tool when it comes to establishing and building trust among the customers.

Keep in mind that if you ask the customers to fill a long transaction form, you are asking them to trust you with the details they are providing. This is not only about the contact details. They might also have to fill in the debit or credit card details. Many people are hesitant to share such details.

To make sure that they don’t hesitate to share such information, you need to establish and build trust. You can include logos in a location where it can be seen to build trust and close the transaction. But make sure that the logos are recognizable to the customers.

2. Reduce Price Shock

One of the primary reasons for cart abandonment is the surprising cost. It is generally related to the shipping charges which show up on the checkout page.

To reduce the cart abandon rate caused by price issues, check if the shipping cost is transparent when the shoppers are checking out the products. You can include a shipping calculator before the checkout page. This can help to estimate the shipping cost and reduce the abandoned cart rate.

Another great approach is to reduce the shipping cost itself. You can do this by providing discounted or free shipping over a specific order value. For example, Amazon offers free shipping for orders of $25 or more. This not only helps in reducing the cart abandon rate but also helps to generate more sales. This is because customers will try to buy additional items to qualify for free shipping for orders of $25 or more.

3. Go for Personal Outreach

You shouldn’t just rely on the responders for trying to save the abandoned carts. If you receive a notification of a cart being abandoned, you can reach out to the customer personally and ask if there is anything that you can help them out with.

You might come to learn that they abandoned the cart because they had a coupon code that didn’t work. If it is possible to solve their problem, they can go back to your site to complete the process. The customers will also appreciate the fact that you took the time to reach out to them. Therefore, personal outreach plays a very important role to reduce the abandoned shopping cart rate.

4. Make it Effortless to Navigate Between Store and Cart

Hardly do customers decide on a product, select it, and check out in one streamlined experience. Just as in the real store, shopping online is indirect and not even close to linear. So, the easier you make it for them to move between the store and the cart, the more likely they are to stick to your website and make the checkout.

However, making the navigation smoother and easier is not easy. Even biggies like Amazon are experimenting with checkout flow for optimizing the checkout experience. You should make it easier for the customers to save the product and return to it when they want to by keeping the cart in progress.

5. Use Cart Abandonment Emails

In case someone is abandoning the cart during the checkout process, there is a chance that you have got hold of their email address. You can set up an auto-responder email notifying them about the items they have left in the cart. You can follow it up with 1-2 more emails that are distributed over the next 24 hours.

In your email, show them the products they have left in the cart, along with the call-to-action. So, they can return to the website and complete the checkout process. In case they don’t, you can use discount emails to entice them to make the purchase.

Why shoppers abandon carts is not easy to find because every customer has different reasons for an abandoned cart. But with the help of the above tips, you will be able to reduce it to some extent.