Shopping cart abandonment is a terrible scourge for e-commerce. This may not be avoided by any existing e-commerce. Shopping cart abandonment is when a consumer adds an item to their shopping cart and leaves without making a purchase or checking out.
This is quite frustrating for business owners, especially if they have done many ways to get consumers such as using paid advertising or by providing attractive offers, but consumers just leave in the middle of the buying process. This is what reduces the income of an e-commerce, this is also part of the dynamics in the business world that cannot be eliminated.
You can prevent consumers from abandoning their shopping carts, you must pay attention to their shopping habits and find the main reasons why they are reluctant to complete the payment process. For example, consumers may look at other similar product options and just finalize them based on certain criteria such as price, brand, rating, reviews, and ease of shopping.
By knowing the main reasons for customer dissatisfaction, you can reduce the possibility of reduced revenue. It’s possible that you made a mistake in an important part so that the shopping cart abandonment rate in your e-commerce is high.
The main reason for the high shopping cart abandonment rate
According to the Baymard Institute , the average shopping cart abandonment rate in e-commerce is 69.99%. Here are some reasons why this happened.
The checkout process is convoluted and long
The attention span of online customers is extremely small. Therefore, a complicated and time-consuming checkout process will only give your customers a less-than-impressive experience and tend to discourage them from making a purchase. Make sure you provide a smooth and easy checkout process for consumers to complete.
Additional cost
This is the main reason consumers don’t make payments, even though they already have the desire to buy the item. According to a research, as many as 48% of consumers abandon their shopping cart when they have to pay additional costs such as taxes, donations, shipping fees, and so on.
Consumers will feel uncomfortable with the many additional costs that exist, especially when the costs already exceed the price of the product they want to buy. This is what causes consumers to discourage buying something.
Security issue
New consumers are reluctant to make payments because they are still hesitant to provide information about credit card numbers or other payment methods through payment services they do not trust. Consumers are worried that if they provide their information to services they do not trust, there will be potential for misuse of their data and information.
10 ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment in e-commerce
Provide a variety of easy payment options
Try to provide payment options that are recognized by many consumers. You can also see what payment methods are being used recently. Providing payment options that are easy and recognized by the public will increase consumer confidence.
Simplify the checkout process
The ideal checkout process only has 3 to 5 steps. No need to give a checkout process that is too long. If possible, provide payment options with a one-click payment system (one-click payment)
Do not give additional costs to consumers
Unexpected additional costs make customers feel annoyed. Customers want the money they spend to be paid off clearly and transparently, this is what causes them to be reluctant to pay if there are additional costs. Don’t give your customers additional costs at checkout, provide them with information about shipping costs, taxes and other service fees on existing product pages.
Do retargeting with email
Retargeting emails is a great way to attract consumers back after they have abandoned their cart. A study from Rejoiners states that 16% of consumers will return to their cart if you send them a retargeting email within one hour of them leaving their cart.
Do A/B testing first with different email retargeting campaigns to find out what can bring back consumers.
Increase site or page loading speed
The slow loading speed of sites or pages is something consumers really don’t like. The average consumer will leave a website if it doesn’t load within three seconds. There are many reasons why a site has a long loading time, including a site that is not optimal or a problem with the site provider
Give the option to do guest checkout
Guest checkout is a checkout option that allows customers to checkout baskets without having to provide information such as credit card numbers, account numbers, and so on. New customers are sometimes reluctant to create an account that is only used once. They don’t want to create an account because it will only waste their time and don’t want to provide too much information and data.
Providing guest checkout to consumers saves their time and consumers also don’t need to provide a lot of data and information because they don’t need to create an account.
Add a progress indicator line at checkout
A progress indicator line that shows a customer’s progress in completing the checkout process is very useful. This is a good UI because it can show the status of the consumer in completing a payment. The line that continues to move forward when the consumer completes one step provides a distinct sense of accomplishment for the consumer. They feel constantly engaged, thereby reducing the abandonment rate of the cart.
Add a Call to Action button
The CTA (Call to Action) button is very important to provide information to consumers regarding the next steps they should take. An example is after the “add to cart” button there is a “buy now” button that directs consumers to the purchase completion section. An unclear CTA button will actually make consumers confused about what to do next, so they ignore their shopping cart.
Add social proof
Prospective buyers will be greatly influenced by the opinions of other consumers about existing products. Social proof can be in the form of reviews, photos or videos that increase consumer confidence. Adding social proof to emails, product pages, and social media can add confidence to your product.
Provide direct consumer assistance
Sometimes consumers experience problems or complaints during the checkout process and want to be properly directed. Direct consumer assistance can help consumers to solve their problems.
Conclusion
Cart abandonment rate is a KPI that must be measured in business. You can lower the cart abandonment rate, but you can’t make it zero. There will always be consumers who abandon their shopping carts for whatever reason.
The average basket abandonment rate is 69.99% or almost 70% and the smallest amount is at 20%. By optimizing the checkout process and doing some of the things above, you can reduce the abandonment rate of existing carts.
