Shopping Cart Abandonment Reasons and How to Counter Them

Suppose you are investing heavily in your ecommerce website to reach a wider audience. Your ecommerce business ranks well on search engines and visitors also come from various social media platforms. In such a scenario, one would definitely expect the conversion rate to go up.

However, if the checkout process of your store is poorly built, you may face an increase in cart abandonment rate and all your efforts will go to vain. To help you avoid such situation, we have compiled reasons (with expert tips) and best practices to reduce your storeÔÇÖs shopping cart abandonment rate.

Reasons behind Shopping Cart Abandonment

Technical problems

Imagine you have added a product to the shopping cart and as the transaction is in the process, the website crashes or is taking too long to respond. According to statistics, nearly 22% potential buyers abandon their shopping cart due to technical problems. Such scenarios drive customers away and result into an unwanted shopping cart abandonment rate.

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Launch your ecommerce website after extensive testing
• If you cannot afford experienced developers, consider going for feature rich ecommerce platform like YoKart
• Make sure you use a good technology stack, which includes open source technologies like PHP and operates on a secure operating system like Linux

Poor UX of Checkout Process

Nearly 27% people abandon their shopping cart if the checkout experience is bad. Long forms, key options not easily visible, loading time ÔÇô there are many reasons that can hamper userÔÇÖs experience during checkout. Some best practices to avoid such situation are mentioned below:

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Ensure minimal number of steps in the checkout process
• Use best practices to minimize the page loading speed
• Make important options like ÔÇ£continue shoppingÔÇØ and ÔÇ£checkout nowÔÇØ easily visible

Extra Cost Associated with a Product

Ecommerce stores face tough competition due to the presence of a large number of competitors. According to Baymard, nearly 61% people abandon their shopping cart if they find hidden costs such as shipping, tax, and other fees to be very high.

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Be transparent about extra costs like shipping, additional order, tax, etc.
• If additional costs are high, compensate them by providing customers additional discount (through promo-code, etc.) on the checkout

Casual Buyer ÔÇô Window Shoppers

There are many people who casually surf ecommerce websites to see different products. This can be compared to window shopping in the real world, where a person does not buy anything but just casually strolls through the market. Such buyers also contribute to increasing the shopping cart abandonment rate. Reason could be change of mind, verifying discount code, checking how much discount they will get, and so on.

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Use banner advertisement to attract userÔÇÖs attention on the on-going offers
• Remarketing can help you track such potential buyers and convert them at a later stage
• By using the power of analytics and heat maps, you can analyze their behavior to improve strategy

Lack of Motivation

There are times when an ecommerce website fails to convert the potential buyer. In such cases, a person half-heartedly adds a product to his / her shopping cart but drops the product just before the final checkout step.

Expert Tips ÔÇô

• Use high-resolution images to maintain a higher user engagement level
• Offer limited time offers, discounts, and email notification for checkout reminder
• Display a clear and easy to understand marketing copy

Competitor Provides Better Offers and Services

In most cases, when a buyer goes through bad user experience, the probability of him / her leaving for a different ecommerce website increases. The reason can be poor customer service, lack of promotional offers, and other value-added marketing initiatives.

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Study your competitors carefully to improve your services
• Put more efforts in providing excellent customer service
• To keep the user engaged, invest in remarketing to display targeted advertisements

Lack of Payment Options

In different markets different modes of payment are preferred. For example, in most developing nations ÔÇ£cash on deliveryÔÇØ is preferred, whereas, in developed nations, credit cards & digital wallets are more popular modes of payment.

Expert Tip ÔÇô

• Research the most used modes of payment in your target market and offer those options to your customers
• Try to provide multiple payment methods to satisfy the needs of a wide range of customers

Additional UX-Focused Best Practices

Showcase Trust Building Elements on Checkout

Most shoppers leave ecommerce websites if they are not sure about its security. Most websites use security seals and other trust-building elements to ensure that the buyer trusts the website, which eventually helps improve the conversion rate and sales figure.

Must Read: How to improve conversion with Product Page Optimization

Offer Freedom to the Buyer

There are times when a buyer wants to add multiple products. In such cases, ÔÇ£Continue ShoppingÔÇØ button comes to use. It lets buyers save the product in the cart and proceed to browse the website & buy other products. Furthermore, by accompanying the delete button in the shopping cart, you can greatly improve the convenience level for the buyer.

Use Statistics to know Abandoned Cart Reasons

By integrating ecommerce-specific analytics to understand buyersÔÇÖ behavior, you can significantly lower the shopping cart abandoned rate. You can use various performance metrics to monitor important statistics like number of users, who:

• Reached checkout
• Purchased the product
• Cancelled

Based on the data obtained from Analytics, you can figure out which part of your website or business strategy needs improvements.

Conclusion

By using the knowledge obtained through above-mentioned points, you can easily be on your way to find solution for shopping cart abandonment on your ecommerce store and bring more sales to your business.

If you still have an unanswered query about how you can keep cart abandonment rate to a minimum, just share it in the comments below and we will reach back to you with a solution.