You may have heard the term of "shopping cart abandonment" before. So, what is shopping cart abandonment? Shopping cart abandonment is a term that used to describe a visitor who comes to a particular site but leave before he or she finished the desired action.


When a customer puts a product into their shopping cart, that isn't a guarantee he or she will buy that product in the end. Sometimes, something happened and your customer leaves without buying the product.

Why people abandon their shopping cart?

There are many explanations why one can leave products in their online shopping cart without paying. In fact, most of the reasons are quite similar to what can happen with a shopping cart in brick and mortar store.
The reasons why shopping cart abandonment can happen are:

•Confusion
Some people may get confused during the checkout process, can not find the button to go to the checkout page, or any user problems, so they give up midway and decided to leave their cart instead. This is why you must create an easy to understand checkout and payment process for your online store.

Do not assume if you understand, then your customers will too. Some people may take things slower than everybody else, so make sure to create a simpler checkout process.

•Impatience
In this fast-paced world, where you can buy almost anything with just a few clicks, most people do not want to bother to wait for more than 5 minutes in front of their computer for your checkout page to load. This is the same like choosing the shortest line in a supermarket.

•Indecision
Just like in a physical store, not all people who visit your site want to buy something. Sometimes, they just came to browse, checking to compare prices, etc.

•Caution
Some people still do not feel safe to shop online. They afraid the site they visited is a fraud, and their credit card gets used by an unauthorized third party or someone else stole their private information. They may get cautious if you asking too much information for their registration form.

How to reduce shopping cart abandonment rate


Here are some tips to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate:

1. Banish all hidden charge
Nobody like surprise charges. If you purposely hid a charge that only appears when the checkout process is done, most people will run away before they can hit the order button. It does not matter what kind of extra cost you need to charge to your customers, they have all the rights to know the details. If you unable to tell them the exact amount, you can at least give them an estimation of the total cost.

2. Make it trustworthy
People who shops online put a large amount of trust in the owner of the online store or brand when they decide to make a purchase. They are not only giving their money but also some of their personal information, to the people whom they never meet in person before. So, how you can gain their trust?

•Put some trustworthy symbols on your site, like PayPal verified logo or other well-known security symbols.
•Using a valid SSL certificate. Make sure to always keep your SSL up-to-date.

3. Offering flat or even free shipping
A study states that about 40% of shopping cart abandonment cases was triggered by a high shipping cost, and about 20% cases were caused because the seller never mentioned any shipping costs in the first place. If it's possible, try to offer flat or even free shipping cost to your customers.

4. Taking advantage of cart abandonment email system
When someone leaves the products in their shopping cart without paying at the end of the checkout process, usually they already put in their email address. Use a cart abandonment email system to send an automated email to remind them about their unfinished purchasing process.

Put the details of the products they left behind in the shopping cart with a call-to-action button to resume the process. If they do not react to your first email, try to offer a discount for their next purchase.

5. Make it accessible from anywhere
People can lose their interest fast if they need to retrace their steps back to another page just to find their shopping cart or to check what items they have put in there. Yes, it may be much simpler for the developer to create a separate page for a shopping cart, but customers may not be able to access their cart easily that way.

In order to fix this problem, you need to make sure the shopping cart symbol always appear from any pages in your site. Do not forget to put the list of the products in the cart too. You can either make it always appear all the time or only appear when the customers hover their mouse on the shopping cart symbol.

6. Offer checkout for guests
Do not even think to force your customers to register on your site just to buy a single product. Forcing them to sign up first will make the checkout process becomes longer, and they probably too busy at the time to do that. So, allow them to check out as a guest. All the information they provided will be used for shipping. You can offer to save their information for future order at the end of the checkout process.

7. Minimize the checkout process
People shop online because it easier, simpler and faster than shopping at a physical store. When they are forced to fill in a long, boring form with so many information in it, they tend to feel annoyed and leave before they can finish the process. You may think this is a small detail, but it is quite important for your customers.

Consider offering an express checkout system in your store too. That way, customers can go straight to the checkout page and fill in their payment information before finalizing their order.

8. Offer more than one payment option
Do not let customers cancel their order just because your store does not accept their credit card. Your online store should be able to accept as many payment options as you can. Do not only focus on Visa and Mastercard but use other third-party payments too like PayPal, etc.



Source: Limecommerce