~Shivam Bhamre
Courtesy: Bruno Kelzer on Unsplash
Imagine owning a shopping store and your customers are filling their carts with products displayed on the shelf, but later you find out that the carts filled with products are left abandoned in the middle of your store just before completing the checkout.
Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most significant problems online business owners face daily. It is estimated that trillions of dollars are lost because of customers not completing their checkout process.
Imagine the revenue growth you will experience if you get to learn about ways to minimize cart abandonment on your retail website.
Let me tell you something: you've come to the right place. In this article, we’re going to give you 10 practically proven ways to reduce cart abandonment on your website and make the majority of your customers make a complete purchase.
1. Offer Provide Free Shipping
Customers are drawn to websites that offer lower shipping costs. One of the reasons for the cart abandonment is the hideous shipping price at the checkout. You can offer customers free shipping. This way, you can assure your customers that they can fill their cart without any hefty surprise shipping charges at the end.
2. Credible Transaction Forms
Asking a customer to fill out the transaction form requires trust, and trust is built when customers know that the form they are filling out is secure. Even while filling in transaction details, many customers hesitate to fill in the details of their hard-earned money and financial identity.
Trust badges are small icons that let your customers know that your site is secure and credible. Using a transaction form with trust badges helps in making your customers comfortable and confident about your website, products, and services. It also helps in establishing a trustworthy relationship with the customers.
3. Use of exit-intent pop-ups
This is one of the best ways to make your customers purchase the products that they have in their cart. An exit pop appears at the exact moment when the customer intends to abandon their cart.
You can display exit pop-ups to potential customers and incentivize them with a promotional discount or coupon code.
4. Allow guests to check out.
It was a common practice by e-commerce websites to force a customer to register before the checkout. This may have created an obstacle for the customer in completing the purchase.
Data according to Invesp states that "failing to offer a guest checkout option is one of the leading reasons for customers abandoning their cart.
Offering a guest checkout to your customers will make buying a product from your website a lot easier. Remember, a great way to increase your sales is to make it easy for the customer to purchase.
5. Include thumbnail images throughout the checkout process.
Not displaying the product thumbnail that is being purchased during checkout can make the process feel detached from the rest of the shopping experience. By displaying the product thumbnail while checking out, you’re not only displaying your customer what is in their cart but also preventing them from getting distracted, especially if they can’t remember what they’re buying, thus preventing the customer from abandoning their cart.
6. Multiple and convenient payment options.
Good business practice is to provide your customers with multiple payment options. The options include credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, and many more. Providing multiple payment options will allow your customers to pay according to their convenience. Incorporate mobile payment options on your websites like Apple Pay and Google Wallet, which are becoming increasingly popular nowadays.
7. Speed up your website loading time.
Your website’s performance can largely affect the rate of shopping cart abandonment. If each page on your website takes a long time to load, customers are more likely to abandon their carts. It is estimated that a customer will leave your site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Host your website with a reliable hosting provider to reduce page loading time.
8. Use the progress indicator
It’ll be very beneficial for you and your customers to add a progress indicator to your website. People hate standing in line for the checkout process in a physical store but at least they can see how many people are up ahead before their number, but in online marketing, people are frustrated filling pages after pages of information without any indicator of when it’ll be done.
9. Site crashes and funny error messages
Site crashes can be very frustrating for a customer and may turn a good shopping experience into a bad one. Chances are your customers will not even give a second thought and straight away abandon your website.
So what is to be done? A reassuring message with a touch of humour will help.
[Description: Amazon hilarious error message Link https://pin.it/4nTI64G]
Select a poster of an animal or something that we humans adore the most. Add a text that matches the personality of the character in the poster.
Redirect the customer to another page or product while the problem is being fixed.
10. Be there for your customers at all times.
What if a person wants to buy something from your website but faces some confusion? Calling customer care or typing an email is a time-consuming option, and delays in answering their queries can force a customer to abandon their cart.
Chatbots are the solution to this problem. Chatbots can help a customer by providing and clearing up their doubts and queries instantly.
Conclusion
Shopping cart abandonment is costing you your fortune. I hope the above article will help you reduce the number of cart abandonment on your website. As a business owner, it is very crucial for you to provide your customers with an experience that makes them want to visit you again.
You can seek help from industry experts, as with their knowledge and experience they can assist you to make your business sky-rocket.
Shivam Bhamre 14 December 2021
