While many entrepreneurs may think that selling their products online will solve all of their problems, the truth is that eCommerce comes with its own unique set of problems that every entrepreneur needs to address. One of these is shopping cart abandonment. This occurs when a consumer places products into a digital shopping cart and never actually completes the sale. Below are some strategies for making sure you don’t let such sales opportunities pass you by.
1. Offer Free Shipping
You need to consider some of the reasons why shopping cart abandonment happens in the first place. One of the causes is the additional expense added by the price of shipping. This may edge out potential customers who only wanted to spend a certain amount of money. Consider different ways to lower your shipping expenses so free shipping can be offered to customers. Offering free shipping for higher cart totals is one strategy that works.
2. Lessen The Number Of Pages Needed To Complete The Purchase
Sometimes consumers can be fickle. They can certainly end up changing their minds quickly. This is why you should design the checkout procedure in a way that the ability to change your mind is lessened. There are many reasons why you may want to have multiple pages in the checkout procedure to ensure that data regarding mailing addresses, payment, etc. is accurate. However, try to limit the number of pages to two if you can. Three should be your maximum. If it takes four or five click-throughs to purchase a product, you are making a mistake.
3. Utilize Retargeting
In certain cases, you won’t be able to stop shopping cart abandonment completely. However, there are strategies you can use to ensure that the shopping cart does not remain abandoned forever. This can be done through the process of “retargeting.” For example, if your website detects that a shopping cart has been abandoned for 12 hours, an e-mail reminding the consumer to complete the purchase can be sent automatically. Another excellent choice is direct mail retargeting. Instead of an email, physical mail in the form of postcards or other printed advertising materials can be sent to the consumer.
4. Allow For Guest Checkout
If you want to lessen shopping cart abandonment on your eCommerce website, you must try to eliminate the number of steps it takes to purchase a product. There are many good reasons to allow customers to make website accounts at your store. However, despite the benefits of having website accounts, you should also allow for guest checkout procedures that do not require an account to purchase a product. This can help to save sales that would be lost from people who do not want to be bothered with setting up a store account.
5. Include More Payment Methods
Another reason a digital shopping cart may be abandoned is when the consumer’s preferred payment method is not accepted by an online store. To prevent this, try to offer as many payment methods as may be feasible for your website. You may even want to offer more non-standard payment methods. For example, 75 percent of businesses expect to be accepting payment in Bitcoin in the future. Offering payment in Bitcoin can make you stand out from your competitors.
6. Make Sure Your Store Is Mobile Optimized
Technical issues can also be a big contributor to shopping cart abandonment. If the online store does not operate as one would expect or produces errors and crashes, that would-be customer may get frustrated and leave. Make sure you test your online store on as many platforms as possible. This certainly includes mobile platforms. Websites operate differently on mobile platforms like iPhone and Android than on Windows. Keep in mind that most sales will probably be made on mobile devices.
7. Increase Your Store’s Trustworthiness
In other cases, the consumer may abandon their shopping cart because they believe actually supplying the website in question with payment and mailing information may be dangerous. Overall, you need to do whatever you can to increase trust in your online store. Otherwise, consumers may assume their sensitive data is not safe with your store. This can be done by taking steps such as obtaining an SSL certificate, security seals for online businesses, and more.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, shopping cart abandonment is a problem all online stores must contend with. However, taking steps such as offering free shipping, alternate payment options, guest checkout and more can do a lot to prevent cart abandonment from being a serious issue for your company. Overall, take these issues seriously and utilize steps like automatic retargeting to help prevent cart abandonment from being permanent.