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In eCommerce, one thing most business owners dread is cart abandonment. Cart abandonment is where a shopper doesn’t complete the checkout process. Cart abandonment rate is indirectly proportional to customer conversion rates and revenue generation from sales. Therefore, it is an essential metric to monitor. The higher the rate the more friction there is in your checkout process or experience. If you’ve noticed a spike in cart abandonment, then it’s high time that you create an abandoned cart strategy to deal with it.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Solutions

In any online business transaction, the checkout process ought to be smooth and secure to the customer. Putting your primary focus on reducing cart abandonment will lead to a seamless shopping experience and complete purchasing.

1. Cost Transparency

Hidden costs and charges are one of the major reasons why cart abandonment happens in the first place. Unexpectedly high shipping costs once the customer has entered their shipping details may lead them to reevaluate their purchase. However, if you provide all costs beforehand, inclusive of taxes and any fees to be expected, you’ll reduce the likelihood of cart abandonment. Shoppers will not get off-guard and will know what they are paying before they can even settle on placing an item on the shopping cart.

2. Effortless Navigation Between Cart and Store

When it comes to how easy it is to check out on a site, a complicated checkout process will detest a potential customer. Websites that request login information everytime a page is refreshed will definitely lose interest to a shopper.

Most customers simply wish to add items to their shopping cart whilst browsing for more items. Making this process quick and easy, leaves customers with an easier time and subsequently makes them more likely to make a purchase.

3. Optimize Loading Speeds

A slow eCommerce site that is bugged and unstable takes a tremendous effort to operate. Shoppers tend to lose confidence in your site if that’s the case. They get frustrated and are likely to not purchase as they fear getting double charged or having their information compromised. As a business, the last thing you’d want is a loss of customer loyalty and having a fast-loading website or eStore is essential. Shoppers are entitled to faster page loading speeds and are happy purchasing as they are confident.

4. Provide Guest Checkout Options

Making it mandatory for users to create an account to enable checking out is quite unnecessary. It is a barrier that needs to be removed as there are shoppers who wish to buy but aren’t ready to sign up. Signing in or signing up are additional steps that potentially slow down the checkout process. Therefore, to ensure that you don’t deter new customers, have a guest checkout option, where visitors don’t have to sign up or sign in. If you need their contact information, you can prompt them to save it at the checkout confirmation step.

5. Provide Several Payment Options

All online shoppers need a payment option that is most convenient to them. The default option presented may not always be suitable for all shoppers. Offering a single payment option is also detrimental to your business as it becomes an obstacle. Presently, there are various payment options like electronic bank transfers, Paypal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay and Apple Pay as well as independent providers. Your eStore should be optimized in a way that it can accept several payment options to maximise a complete checkout process. You can select the payment options by analysing what your target audiences prefer as their mode of payment and including it in your website.

6. Secure Payment Systems

Providing several payment options is just one step, the next involves securing these modes of payment. Since the onset of online data insecurity, most online shoppers are sceptical about online payments and tend to be very cautious. Unsecure payment systems will drive away shoppers, negatively impacting your eStore.

Unfortunately, this is not something you can just reassure by testimonials alone, you have to create a secure payment infrastructure as well. Having secure payment systems will guarantee safety for the shoppers who’ll provide sensitive information to complete a checkout process.

7. Include Discounts and Promo Codes

The world of business is quite tough, it doesn’t matter whether it is physical or online, price competition is always present. Since shoppers are drawn to businesses that have comparably fair prices, discount offers and promotions are necessary. Shoppers like to feel they have made a good deal in the end and competitors use this to their advantage. To out-match them, offer discounts and promotion codes to dissuade shoppers from buying from your competitor.

8. Have A Refund and Return Policy

Return policies are essential for eCommerce, as the product is online, shoppers can technically try it out or see the product in person. An online store that offers a good return policy will keep shoppers at ease during purchasing. A refund or return policy is placed earlier in the checkout process to lure the customer and entice them to complete the checkout process.

9. Provide Live Chat Support

Live chat support is an additional benefit you can provide to your shoppers. Quite often, shoppers have been left frustrated over lack of support and thus exited before completing the checkout process. Live support will provide an avenue where the shopper can ask questions related to an item of interest. Just like with the physical store “live” support, eStore live chat support provides all the information required to seal the deal on a purchase. Live chat support integration or cart abandonment sites limits the possibility of an interrupted checkout process.

9. Abandoned Cart Emails

Abandoned cart emails are an attempt to convert a lost prospect into a brand enthusiast. Basically, it reminds a shopper of the items they left on the cart and didn’t checkout. It is a useful strategy to reduce cart abandonment and recover sales.

Optimize Your eStore to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment 

Reducing cart abandonment is not just a one-time deal, it’s an ongoing process. It will involve utilizing data from various sources, both qualitative and quantitative and leveraging them in your strategy. You can start by analysing conversion funnel leaks by focusing on user behaviour. Is it payment problems, or UX/UI functionality, or perhaps its lack of customer support? In any case, funnel leaks need to be plugged in to reduce cart abandonment.

Moreover, you can collect customer feedback to help you figure out the points that are negatively influencing your eStore. Always ask your customers, even those who’ve abandoned their carts, their feedback and how you can improve the process. direct feedback is essential in providing insights that may have been skipped by data analytics tools.

Conclusion

While target audiences differ in their preferences, most of them share similar buying habits. At the very least, if a checkout process is frustrating, time-consuming and arduous any shopper will undoubtedly abandon their purchase midway.To ensure a smooth checkout process and increase sales, you must provide quality purchasing experiences to your shoppers and convert them to paying customers. Hopefully, the aforementioned tips will provide shopping cart abandonment solutions when implemented. Do you have an online business? How did you reduce cart abandonment from your shoppers? We would like to know.