Jared Atchison September 12, 2021 In 2021, over 2.14 billion people worldwide are expected to buy goods and services online, according to Statista. That’s a lot of potential online shoppers to tap into for your eCommerce business.
However, customers can easily get lost on the way to the checkout page. In fact, shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest problems eCommerce businesses face. Trillions of dollars are lost every year because customers don’t finish the checkout process.
That’s why, in this post, I’m excited to give you my top 5 tactics for reducing shopping cart abandonment. But before we dig in deeper, let’s take a look at common reasons for shopping cart abandonment.
Common Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment
Did you know that, on average, 67.91% of all shopping carts online are abandoned? Shopping cart abandonment is when your customers have added items to their shopping but left before paying.
Here are the most common reasons why shoppers abandon their shopping carts:
- Complicated or confusing checkout processes
- Unexpected shipping costs
- Product quantity restrictions
- Forced account creation
- Payment security concerns or lack of payment options
- Dubious return or refund policy
- Long delivery time
- Poor website user-experience
If this makes you sweat a bit, don’t worry, because you can easily reduce shopping cart abandonment by using these top 5 tactics.
1. State All Costs
You remove unpleasant surprises when clearly stating all costs, including shipping costs, possible import costs (if offering delivery overseas), taxes, and any other fees they should expect.
No one is prepared for and will appreciate a bargain turning into an expensive premium product because of hidden costs.
Unexpected costs can catch shoppers off guard and make them leave without completing the purchase, so make sure to be upfront with all costs.
2. Use Exit-Intent Popups
One of the best ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment is adding a popup to your website that uses Exit-Intent® Technology. OptinMonster offers many pre-installed templates you can use to bring back customers to your cart.
As soon as your customer is about to leave the checkout page, the exit-intent popup will display a campaign they hopefully can’t resist. That way, you can capture your shopper’s attention at the exact moment they plan to abandon their carts.
For example, this Exit-Intent campaign offers a 20% discount on the total purchase if completing the purchase.
Who can say no to this adorable baby kitten, right?!
By giving customers an incentive using a coupon code or promotional discount, you can motivate hesitant shoppers to go through with their purchase.
3. Offer Free Shipping
Offering free shipping is a proven incentive that works brilliantly to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
That’s because one of the biggest reasons why people abandon their cart is unexpected charges for shipping and taxes at the end of checkout.
For example, you’ve probably experienced adding a product to your cart for $ 19.99, and when it’s time to pay, the price bumps up to $ 40 and doubles the purchase price.
This sudden price increase won’t sit right with most customers. They will likely leave their carts and shop around for a better deal.
However, you can eliminate this issue by offering free shipping above a specific price limit. And why not promote it with a floating bar across your site?
It will grab shoppers’ attention and encourage them to go through with the purchase.
4. Send Cart Recovery Emails
Another excellent way to get customers to revisit your shopping cart is to follow up with them using cart recovery emails.
If you are a frequent online shopper browsing many eCommerce sites, you may get distracted and forget the items you were about to purchase.
But sending cart recovery emails will remind shoppers they haven’t completed their purchase and allow them to pick up where they left off.
And to streamline the process, you can add a link that takes shoppers back to the same stage, where they originally dropped off. Or you can offer a small discount to entice them to revisit the cart.
5. Create a Sense of Urgency
The final and great tactic you can use to reduce shopping cart abandonment is to create a sense of urgency. Let customers know that your discount or the promotional offer won’t last forever.
One of the best ways to do this is by displaying a countdown timer on your site.
This being the case, you can easily add a countdown timer to your eCommerce site using a WordPress plugin like SeedProd, OptinMonster, Countdown Timer Ultimate, Countdown Builder, and more.
These plugins let you add static or dynamic countdown timers to any of your campaigns. The sense of urgency they create can motivate hesitant buyers to start and go through the entire checkout process.
Conclusion
I hope these tactics will come in handy when working on reducing your shopping cart abandonment. Remember to optimize your website for page load speed so that you can provide a good user experience. No one likes to wait for a product page that takes forever to load, which could make customers leave before even starting their shopping journey. Make it effortless for customers to purchase from your online store.
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