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Every day, businesses bleed money away. Only a few of your visitors will end up buying your products.
It can even get worse.
Some visitors abandon your website after adding products to their cart.
This is a situation that worries every ecommerce website owner.
According to 48 cart abandonment studies, 7 out of 10 people leave their cart without buying.
No matter what you sell, you’re leaving a lot of money on the table because of cart abandonment.
While recovering every abandoned cart is impossible, the good news is you can recover enough to boost your sales significantly.
So, in this post, I’ll show you 9 effective tips to lower ecommerce cart abandonment.
Let’s get started
1. Ensure customers are aware of all possible costs
People hate surprises, especially if they need to dish out more money.
If the cost at checkout exceeds that on the product page, shoppers will simply abandon the page.
They’ll feel you want to trick the shopper. Or rob them.
In most cases, the extra costs are shipping fees and value-added tax (VAT).
Sure, customers know there may be extra costs beyond the product price. But they want to know about it ahead of payment.
If you hide shipping fees, they may think free shipping is part of the deal. So, seeing these fees at the checkout is an unwanted surprise.
For instance, Baymard Research revealed that 48% of consumers who abandoned their carts did so because of extra costs such as shipping, tax, and fees.
Now, how do you ensure shoppers don’t leave their carts because of surprises?
Show all possible costs on the product pages.
State that customers will pay VAT and shipping fees on top of the product price. In fact, if the shopper’s location is known, you can show the shipping costs.
This way, the buyer knows how much they’ll pay before adding products to their cart.
Check out this example by Jumia, an ecommerce company:
Shoppers can see their shipping fee on the product page, depending on their location. So, the buyer knows the total before adding the product to cart.
This makes the buyer’s life easier if they want to compare it with another website.
So, by just showing possible costs, you’ve optimized your ecommerce store for better conversions.
2. Make cart content obvious to shoppers
Online shoppers check out multiple ecommerce sites before buying products.
Why?
They want the best deal they can get.
How do you deal with this potential disadvantage as a seller?
Let buyers know they have products in their carts.
When they revisit your site, they’ll see products where they left them: in their cart. Also, showing the number of products in their cart will remind them they have some purchases to complete.
If they have to add the products to the cart again, the purchase becomes less likely.
Showing products in their cart will attract their consciousness to it. See an example from the ecommerce giant Amazon:
If you’re using the Woocommerce platform, you can add this to your navigation bar.
And it even allows you to do more. You can add a total price to the cart. This way, a potential buyer knows how much they’re paying when they proceed to check out.
3. Add attractive images and videos to your product page
One of the main worries people have about buying online is that they cannot physically touch or see the product.
People want to be sure that what they see is what they’ll get. That’s why many people pay online and pick up at a physical store.
But what if you have no physical store?
Then, using attractive images and videos is the next best option. The media content will show what the customer should expect when the package lands at their doorstep.
Images and videos should show all angles of your product.
You can also show them what the product looks like during use. This will help eliminate the worries a potential customer has.
How can you do this?
You can check Zappos for inspiration. For its shoes, Zappos has many images that show different angles of the shoe.
Beyond that, a short video review shows how it looks on the feet. At this point, the only thing left is for the customer to touch the shoe.
The media content can also be useful if the shopper wants to compare 2 products before buying.
4. Improve customer trust through secure payment
With a lot of payments done online, fraudsters have also gone online.
And people lose billions of dollars annually to online fraud.
A study by Juniper research revealed that online payment fraud is expected to hit $48 billion by 2023, up from $22 billion in 2018.
So, if a shopper has $1,000 on their credit card, they have at least 1,000 reasons to be careful.
You can eliminate this fear by providing secure payment and showing shoppers evidence of it.
Generally, secure payment just means a system that ensures a shopper’s payment information is safe from hackers who want to steal their money.
There are two major ways to give buyers a sense of security:
Use SSL certificate
This shows your website is secure for people visiting. An SSL certificate goes a long way to show visitors that their data is safe.
This is usually evident with the ‘https’ before your website address, where ‘http’ means little safety. It’s even more important if you’re taking payment details.
A site without an SSL certificate will show ‘Not secure’ before the website address.
Will you release your payment information after seeing that? Neither will your buyers.
Use trust logos
These logos help to show buyers that some online security companies have vetted your website. While using trust logos, it’s necessary to use one that your buyer already knows and trusts.
A Baymard Institute survey found that Norton’s and Google’s logos inspire more trust in consumers while making payments online.
Assuring customers about the security of their money will ensure they proceed to checkout.
5. Enable a guest checkout option
Ecommerce should be synonymous with convenience. At least, that’s how your customers see it.
That’s why most customers only want to take as few steps as possible before their purchase.
So, what if you force a shopper to open an account before a purchase? They may see no point going through the stress.
After all, it may just be a one-time purchase.
A guest checkout option means your visitor can buy a product before they open an account. Even though you want your buyers to have an account with you, making a purchase should be your first goal.
After a purchase, you can then ask them to open an account to enjoy benefits like exclusive offers. At this point, they’re more likely to open an account since they’ve already made a commitment.
You can enable guest checkout for the two most popular ecommerce platforms. On WooCommerce, go to the checkout settings and check the “Enable guest checkout” box.
Likewise, on Shopify, check “Accounts are optional” in the customer accounts setting to enable guest checkout.
If you feel creating an account is compulsory, combine it with the process of collecting their payment information. Since they’ve already listed their name, you can add a box for their password.
A guest checkout option signifies ease, which most online shoppers expect.
6. Provide live chat for better customer support
During the buying process, potential customers can have questions your product page didn’t answer.
If they have to start looking for the answer, they may leave instead.
For example, research by Forrester reveals that 55% of US online adults are likely to abandon their online purchase if they can’t find a quick answer to their question.
But there’s a way out: a live chat button.
You can add a live chat button to your website. With that, buyers can ask urgent questions about your product.
These can be about shipping, return policies, guarantees, or any other part of your service.
To encourage visitors, you can show a chat prompt with various options.
You can even make your live chat more effective by incorporating chatbots into it. This way, customers can get answers to common questions in seconds.
For more complex questions, they can be transferred to your customer support staff.
To add live chat to your website, you’ll need live chat software. You can check out Drift to Tidio, which are good options.
How can live chat help your ecommerce website?
Intuit was able to increase the average order value on its checkout page by 43% through the use of proactive live chat. Furthermore, it increased conversion rates on the product comparison page by 211% and on lead generation page by 195%.
Live chat is a way to answer common product questions at the time when answers are critical to conversions.
7. Use social proof to convince customers
When making buying decisions, people often look toward others.
Because it makes their lives easier.
If other people think a product is great, then it must be great. At least, that’s how most people decide whether a product is good enough.
This is why shoppers check online reviews before buying a product. And that’s why social proof is so powerful.
Social proof includes elements that show your product is in high demand and has delivered important benefits to people like the shopper.
What do people think about your product? How has it improved their lives? How many people have purchased the product?
You can employ social proof in many ways to prevent cart abandonment. Some of them are:
- Showing the number of people who have bought your product
- Showing testimonials on the product page
- Showing average customer rating
- Collecting and displaying customer reviews
- Displaying buyers making purchases in real time
Social proof is compelling because your customers are marketing your products on your behalf. And potential buyers are more likely to listen to them than you.
See an example by Zulily:
The message here is simple to a prospective buyer: buy the product now, or you may lose the opportunity soon. And see the number of people who want to buy this amazing product ahead of you!
8. Offer various payment options
Initially, the most popular form of payment has been through cards.
While cards are still popular, more options now exist for buyers.
They now want to make cardless payments to lower the risk of fraud. As a seller, you should accept the most popular payment gateways on your website.
Common payment methods include:
- Credit and debit cards
- Digital wallets
- Bank transfers
- PayPal
- Cryptocurrency
- Stripe
- Square
Apart from that, you should consider your ideal buyers and the payment platforms they tend to use. Ensure your store supports these platforms.
This can come at an extra cost for your business. But losing customers is even more costly.
Some potential buyers will leave their carts if they can’t find their preferred payment platform.
See an example by Mindmeister where they offer multiple payment options. Most potential customers will likely use at least one of the payment platforms.
Multiple payment options mean you give shoppers the option to use their most preferred payment method.
9. Offer free shipping
Over the years, many businesses have incorporated free shipping into their services. And now, most customers expect free shipping.
Or at least, it’s an incentive that can encourage them to buy a product. If they’re trying to decide between 2 sellers, then free shipping could make the difference.
In fact, some shoppers will abandon their carts because of shipping costs. In a Statista study, 63% of digital shoppers abandon their carts because of too much shipping costs.
So, free shipping or discounted costs can convince a visitor to buy your products.
One popular example of a company that offers free shipping is Zappos. On all their products.
You may be unable to do this.
But you should always find a way to lower shipping costs for your customers. And even if you can’t offer free shipping for all products, you can do it when some conditions are met. Examples are:
- When they cross a purchase threshold
- On some products
- During some periods of the year
- As a form of promotional offer
If it has no negative impact on your profits, then you should offer free shipping for your buyers. This can help keep your customers loyal.
After some time, they’ll only shop on your website when they need a product. As a result, the risk of cart abandonment will decrease considerably.
You can also have a subscription plan for regular buyers, offering them free shipping and other benefits.
This is what Amazon has done with its Amazon Prime subscription. The ecommerce giant has also found that these subscribers buy more than non-subscribers.
Conclusion
When your potential buyer gets to your checkout page, little things could be the difference between them proceeding to the checkout or leaving their carts.
To reduce ecommerce cart abandonment, use this guide as a checklist and implement these strategies.
Which of these strategies are you planning to implement?
Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.