What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?
Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a shopper adds products to their online shopping cart, but never completes the purchase. It’s a term that’s unique to eCommerce merchants. In a retail business, it’s not likely that someone who comes in, picks up an item, stands in line, and then suddenly decides to leave the line without the item. This happens on eCommerce websites often for many reasons that are surprisingly within the control of a merchant.
To determine the shopping cart abandonment rate for your website, take the total number of completed transactions, and divide it by the total number of transactions interrupted. That’s the percentage of purchases that weren’t completed by online shoppers.
Given the high average percentage of shoppers who don’t complete a sale, it’s a critical problem that online merchants must address. Mitigating the risk entirely is not possible because some people will not finish a purchase. A large chunk of consumers falls into that “just browsing” category, making it the main culprit of cart abandonment.
But it’s possible to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate by making improvements to your eCommerce experience. Other key reasons for abandonment during checkout include:
- High additional costs (shopping, taxes, fees, etc.)
- Requiring a shopper to create an account
- Long, complicated checkout process
- Not being able to see or calculate the total cost for the order up-front
Let’s dive into ways to address these concerns head-on.
1. Provide Clear Descriptions of Products
Shoppers buying products on the internet can’t physically touch or see what they’re buying.
They rely on the product description and images to decide whether the product is what they’re
looking for. Make sure that your product descriptions are accurate and specific to dispel any
uncertainty they may have.
Include information in your product descriptions that includes the dimensions, materials, weight,
and uses for the product. The features and benefits should be balanced equally in the description. You have to create the value proposition in the product and what it provides to show how it will benefit them, instead of simply listing out the features. Your conversation rate will improve as a result of adding clarity to your product descriptions.
2. Make the Checkout Process Easy to Navigate
A shopper faced with a complex checkout process will become frustrated and is more likely to abandon the transaction. Streamline your checkout process to make it as easy as possible to complete the sale. Minimize the number of fields that a shopper must enter during the checkout process. For example, try to use a checkout process that can auto-populate the “City” and “State” when the zip code is typed. There’s no reason to try to get all their information at once when they’re making a purchase. Follow-up marketing campaigns can be developed to capture additional information later.
Adding a progress indicator on checkout pages can also help reduce the friction of the checkout progress. It eliminates the ambiguity on how much longer the process will take.
3. Avoid Mandatory Opt-Ins
Requiring a customer to create an account in order to checkout will slow down the checkout process and likely result in them abandoning the sale altogether. Asking them to enter information and confirm their email address before they can go back and complete the purchase adds a lot of extra steps.
Remove this account creation requirement from your eCommerce experience and enable guest checkout instead. You can always ask them to create an account later on. It may also be worth looking at easy account creation options. Many eCommerce websites allow shoppers to use their Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, etc. account to sync with their retail accounts. This way, you can still get the information you want before the order is complete.
4. Be Upfront About Fees
ECommerce shoppers often experience sticker shock during the checkout process. According to a 2018 study, 63 percent of shoppers have reported that the “shipping costs too much” which is a direct cause fort abandonment. In response, Amazon and other large retailers have used free and fast shipping as a key selling point for customers.
Manage these expectations upfront by prominently displaying what shipping costs are to reduce the friction a shopper may experience once they reach the checkout process. Another consideration is incorporating the price of shipping into the price of the product so that “free shipping” can be offered. Another option is to offer free shipping if the shopper meets a certain threshold in their shopping cart. This could increase the average ticket sale on purchases as a result. No matter what option you choose, make sure your site is transparent and upfront with costs to avoid any negative consequences.
