Some customers put items in their cart but decide not to buy them. This is a problem that many small businesses encounter. Customers might have last second doubts about checking out, they might be browsing other shops and see better deals, or simply because they found the checkout process too tedious. Whatever the reasons are, you lose sales because a customer abandoned their cart. You need to find ways to improve their experience and reduce cart abandonment.
How do you reduce cart abandonment? These are the best practices you can implement for your own online store.
Make Total Costs Clear
Some shoppers might abandon their cart because of the additional costs they might incur once they reach the payment option. Make all costs clear to a customer throughout the process. Include possible fees such as shipping, taxes, and others. This allows them to compute their total cost and make up their mind if the items they’re buying are within their budget. This enables you to funnel customers faster down the buyer’s journey because you’ll filter out site visitors that are more likely to make a purchase.
Simplify the Checkout Process
One of the customer pain points that might be affecting your sales is a tedious checkout process. Visitors might be having a difficult time going through a page just to check out their cart. The site might not be user-friendly, contain too many images that clutter a page, unclear call-to-action, or it might contain poorly written copy that confuses a visitor. Simplify the checkout process by making the button that redirects to the payment page obvious and clear. Make the page easy to navigate and browse by removing unnecessary clutter.
Offer Payment Options
Many users are used to online stores that offer multiple payment options. If your website doesn’t have payment options, visitors might look elsewhere to shop once they reach the payment page. Integrate various payment options on your website from PayPal to Apple Pay to the usual credit and debit cards. Secure the payment and data of your customers so they can trust your store.
Allow to Save Contents of Cart
Allow customers to save the items in their shopping cart. They might be computing their budget and considering if it’s within or over their spending limits. They might also just be consulting their family, friends, or partner about the items they want to buy. Allowing them to save the contents of their carts eliminates the hassle of looking for the same products again when they return to your online store.
Remind Shoppers about the Contents of Their Cart
Use a pop-up or a prompt about the contents of a shopper’s cart throughout the process of browsing or going through payment. Include messaging such as limited stocks only, few items left, and/or only available within a certain timeframe. This creates a sense of urgency in a user and directs them towards completing their order.
Make Your Call-to-Action Clear
A shopper might not know what to do and where to go next after adding items to their cart. Reduce cart abandonment by making your call-to-action clear and precise. Prompt a customer that they’ve successfully added an item to their cart and point them to the next step. Make the checkout button stand out so that a customer knows they can proceed to payment easily.
Provide Delivery Options
Shoppers want to spend as little as possible after adding items to their carts. Provide them with multiple delivery options and shipping fees. Some customers don’t mind paying extra as long as they get their items early, while others are willing to wait if it means free or minimal shipping costs. Make sure to include shipping fees in your pricing so that a potential customer will have an idea of how much their total cost is as they go through the payment process.
Provide a Guest Checkout Option
A customer might find it a hassle to register and create an account just to pay for their items. They might be a first-time customer that is just trying your products first before committing. Reduce cart abandonment by offering a guest checkout option. This provides a user flexibility on whether to buy from you again or look elsewhere. You don’t want to force them to decide right away. Incentivize signing up by offering exclusive deals and discounted prices. These incentives might give them a reason to create an account.
Send Conversion Messages
To avoid cart abandonment, you can send targeted conversion messages to customers. A user receives a message about the limited availability, or a few stocks left of the items they have in their cart. This creates a sense of urgency or possible regret of missing out. This makes a user think twice before abandoning their cart. It nudges them to buy instead of leaving your online store.
Offer Support
You might have users that need assistance with shopping, browsing your website, or have questions about the products they are interested in buying. If they can’t get the support they need, they might just leave your site and buy from your competitors. To avoid this problem, use a live chat or make the links to your help page obvious. This makes it easier for them to reach out to an agent whenever they want to ask something or troubleshoot a problem.
Track Visitor Behavior
You won’t identify a pattern or causes for cart abandonment if you don’t monitor the behavior of your site’s visitors. Install tools that enable you to monitor your website’s data. With this information, you can determine which devices lead to the highest cart abandonment rate, at which stage of the buyer’s journey a customer leaves, and how many pages a user visits just to name a few sets of data you can analyze.
The problems that cause cart abandonment can be as simple as misplaced or unclear call-to-action buttons or you don’t offer enough payment options. Knowing the cause allows you to find the right solutions. Implement these tips to reduce cart abandonment and improve your site’s conversion rate.
We at Robookkeeper can assist you whenever you need to update your accounting books regularly. We connect you with experienced virtual bookkeepers to work with you. We offer first-rate outsourced bookkeeping services for entrepreneurs.
