4 Easy Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Every eCommerce website owner knows that there is nothing worse than abandoned carts. You know how it is. You spent endless hours promoting your website and funneling traffic into your product pages. Your heart skipped a beat when your prospect started adding products into their carts only to abandon them afterwards. This event is often enough to make you scream and ask ‘why?’,

According to Invespcro, there are several reasons why cart abandonment happens.

Usually, it has something to do with the shipping rate, price of the product and the lack of information.

Today, we are going to tackle these problems one-by-one in an effort to decrease the overall cart abandonment rate of your website.

What is Cart Abandonment?

Before we go into the strategies, let us first discuss what cart abandonment is.

Cart abandonment is the rate at which visitors are adding products to their carts but not proceeding with the order. This has a massive effect on an eCommerce website’s profitability due to its effect on the bottom line.

However, the number of abandoned carts seem to be increasing.

According to BI Intelligence, the industry average for abandoned carts is already at 71.2% and that number still keeps on increasing over time.

That is a lot of lost sales!

So what can eCommerce website owners like us do?

Here are some effective strategies.

Provide Free Shipping

Shipping seems to be the #1 reason for cart abandonment. According to the study of Invescpro, 44% are surprised with the high shipping costs while 22% are not even aware that there is a shipping cost. This encourages them to abandon their carts.

Another study agrees with this indicating that 28% will abandon their carts due to high shipping costs.

This shows that shipping is the usual culprit for cart abandonment.

Solving this is easy. In fact, many eCommerce website owners solved this problem by providing free shipping.

In fact, free shipping is already quite common on 53% of  eCommerce websites.

This drastic change happened over the years as can be seen in the image below.

You can see an upward trend in providing free shipping.

And that’s not all.

Products also seem to increase in value when free shipping is there. According to TechCrunch, products automatically get a 30% higher perceived value when it has free shipping.

True enough, a study by the E-tailing group found that customers are willing to pay the full price when there’s free shipping.

This goes to show that you can really make more money with this strategy.

Here are some online stores that took this advice to heart and took action.

First is 6PM. They are providing free shipping for purchases of 2 items and above.

And then, there’s ASOS that has a free worldwide delivery.

And there is also BBC Shop that has the free shipping highlighted at the top of its page.

As you can see, providing free shipping is already quite common to most eCommerce websites. They do this not only to entice customers to buy but also because it can effectively lower cart abandonment rates.

No Account. No Problem

Here’s the thing. People don’t like registering for an account in a website that they hardly know.

Also, it makes the experience too complicated for them.

Think about it.

Let’s say that you found a product that you like to buy and you are greeted with a huge online form like this.

Will you still buy?

Heck no!

It is easier to click ‘Back’ than to fill up this form.

So what should you do to get on the good side of your prospects?

Throw away the registration form – have an order form instead.

The order form is still quite similar to a registration form – it will still have the buyer’s name and personal details.

But this time, it will not feel as if you are trying to get information from your prospects. It will just seem that you are asking for their personal information because you need to deliver the item – those two are entirely different things.

True enough, the lack of a guest option is a common reason for abandoned carts.

The reason for this is that people feel quite uneasy with putting their personal information online. There are are even people who feel so squeamish about it that they abandon their carts just for that reason.

You can easily turn things around by talking to them – either through Live Chat or over the phone.

It seems that people are more comfortable leaving their personal information with someone that they know.

This brings us to the next strategy…

Provide Customer Assistance

Customer assistance is vital in e-Commerce websites. And it is not just for product and delivery concerns. It is also vital in the checkout process as well.

Let’s go back to the study of Invescpro, and look at the other reasons for cart abandonment.

This shows that 12% abandon their carts because they still need more information and 11% just find the whole checkout process too complex.

What’s common?

The need for information.

According to Brian Dean in Quicksprout, cart abandonment can be solved easily by being open to questions.

He said that tools like Chat and a 1-800 number can help decrease cart abandonment.

Let us see how eCommerce website owners are doing this.

First, there is RadarBusters. It may look like a simple website on the surface but look up and you’ll see a 1-800 number and a chat at the side.

Then, there is EverBlue. I love how this website took cart abandonment seriously.

First, it has a 1-800 number and a Leave a Message Feature.

And it also has this mechanism that catches leaving visitors. Interesting, right?

The lesson?

Don’t let your customers go away with the mere lack of information. Be ready to assist them in any problem that they may face.

Out of the two, the best seems to be live chat as it provides convenience and satisfaction.

According to a Software Advice website, it seems that millennials generally prefer chat over other forms of communication.

Satisfaction is also significantly higher compared to other communication channels.

You may want to implement Live Chat in your website. It may help you address your customer’s’ problems and eventually solve cart abandonment.

Ask Them to Check Out

Sometimes, you don’t have to make things complicated. You can instantly lower your cart abandonment rates by simply asking your customers to do it.

I think that Zappos is the perfect example. If you visit their website, you will be greeted with a homepage.

Once you add some items into the cart, you instantly be greeted with this page with a clear orange Checkout Button. It may seem subtle but it also reminds the customer to check out.

Catch Exit Traffic

You have seen how the rate of abandoned carts is increasing. With this in mind, you should have a strategy on how to catch this exit traffic.

It is important to see where they start abandoning your website and why they do it. You can see this in the Exit Rate.

From here, you need to give them a heads up about their abandoned cart. You can do this through a simple e-mail.

Take a look at what Black Milk Clothing is doing. Here is an e-mail that they send to people who abandoned their carts.

It’s cute, right? And it’s very effective as well.

Or you can do what EverBlue is doing. It catches all exit traffic and directs them to their telephone number.

You can also become more creative with the pop-up and include a discount code instead.

Here is an exit intent pop up from Pura Vida Bracelets. The discount is very clear and it even asked for the visitor’s e-mail address so that you can follow up with them. The Get My Discount Now button is also very interesting as it encourages people to key in their email address for a discount.

WordPress users have lots of options when it comes to exit intent pop-ups. Here are some plugins that you can use for this purpose.

 1.  Yeloni Exit Popup

A popular exit popup plugin is Yeloni. It has a free version that has its limits but it is still effective. I love this plugin because it allows you to show more than mere email signup forms in your popup. It can also show social buttons as well.

This plugin works by tracking where the reader is on your page. It looks at the scrolling mechanism that triggers the exit-intent lead-capture page when the visitor hits the bottom of the page. From here, you can customize the message.

The popup by Yeloni is already designed for maximum conversion in mind. It is only triggered when the visitor is about to leave and doesn’t slow your site in any way.

On top of all of these, the plugin also has amazing customer support. If you are having trouble setting up the plugin, their staff will be happy to assist you. And if you want a custom image on your pop-up, they will do that for you as well.

2. OptiMonk

If you want custom pop-ups that asks questions instead of just asking for e-mails and showing discount codes, then OptiMonk is for you.

This is an award winning plugin that has a 14-day free trial. While it is paid, it is worth every cent because of its highly customizable popup themes.

Its exit intent pop-up is also designed for maximum conversions. Its main design is for email capture but it can also be customized to include special offers and discounts. The best part? It is triggered at the exact moment that your customer is about to leave your website. This ultimately gives you the second chance to bring your customer back into the order page.

3. WordPress Exit Pop

This plugin is specifically designed for eCommerce website owners. Aside from WordPress integration, it seems that this plugin is specifically designed for WooCommerce (an eCommerce plugin for WordPress) as well.

This is created with the statistics of abandoned carts in mind. The Exit Pop-ups are designed in a way that encourages the visitors to come back into the online store.

The best part?

It doesn’t take a long time to set up. In fact, this plugin boasts a 1-minute set up system where you can just set it up and watch it do its magic. No coding needed.

The way this works is through cursor movement tracking. Once the plugin felt that the user is about to leave the website, the pop-up is triggered.

I love this because it also has built-in analytics that allows you to track the conversions of different pop-ups and campaigns.

4. Autience Exit Pop-Up

If you want to make a unique offer to your buyers, this is the best pop-up to do it.

What this does is that it is triggered when you want it to be triggered. You can do it when your visitors is about to leave your website and it gives you the chance to give them an offer or you can do it in other instances as well.

This is perfect for eCommerce website owners who love to give discounts to their buyers or want to highlight certain products in their pages. It is a flexible plugin that creates pop-ups for more than exit traffic.

It is still designed to counter cart abandonment.

The only difference?

You get to decide the timing and appearance of the pop-up.

Pretty cool, right?

Turn Abandoned Carts into Sales

Abandoned carts should not result to an empty pocket. There are multiple ways to turn things around.

  • You can give free shipping to end the issue of high shipping costs.
  • You can remove the registration form to solve privacy issues.
  • You can talk to them to see if they have questions.
  • You can install an exit intent pop-up to get them back into your website.

There are plenty of ways to decrease your cart abandonment. The key is to be proactive in tweaking your website for maximum returns.

What is your experience with cart abandonment? Are you doing something to decrease it? Tell me all about it below.

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3 Response to "4 Easy Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment"

  1. Comment From Tina Williamson

    The best way I see is to have customer support available during the day to field calls and live chats.



  2. Comment From Joe Turner

    A great way to Catch Exit Traffic is to offer a super big discount like 30 to 50% that only works the same day.



  3. Comment From Wilma Yandas

    If you can Provide Free Shipping I think that will be the best thing you can do. Why would I pay for Shipping on your site when I can get the same item using Amazon Prime and get free 2-day shipping.



Comments are closed.