4 Steps to Lower Your Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

Photo Credit: By mohamed_hassan on Pixabay. CC0 license.

The shoppers are on your site, they are interested in the product, but the design of your shopping cart is causing you to lose many if not most of your customers. Sound familiar? It should.

The shoppers are on your site, they are interested in the product, but the design of your shopping cart is causing you to lose many if not most of your customers. Sound familiar? It should.

Recent research indicates that the average e-commerce site is losing near 75 percent of its shoppers during shopping cart phase of a transaction. While that statistic is probably influenced upward by a few terrible websites, the fact remains that most sites are losing huge numbers of customers by not focusing on their shopping cart. Fortunately, by taking a few relatively minor steps, you can vastly decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Fewer Steps are Better

This mantra is as old as e-commerce itself. By forcing your customers to go through multiple pages you will assuredly see some attrition. You should ask yourself, is all the information I am collecting absolutely necessary? Is there another configuration that would reduce the number of steps my customers will face? Surprisingly, however, this is probably the last step that you should take. Unless your process is particularly laborious, empirical studies indicate that this will likely affect your attrition minimally for the cost and effort required. So, I am not saying not to reduce your checkout steps, but only that you should prioritize the other steps above this one.

Progress Indicators

In both e-commerce and brick and mortars, the single biggest inhibitor to conversions is uncertainty. This is certainly easy to imagine when you consider some brick and mortar examples. BestBuy stores have transitioned to a single line for all of their cashiers rather than having customers pick a cashier to line up in front of. Why? The answer is simple, uncertainty hurts conversion rates. Humans have an instinctual desire to know what is coming ahead. By including a progress indicator at each and every step of the checkout process you will see some remarkable increases in customer retention. Even if you have a 10 step checkout process, letting customers know where they are along the process will ensure a much greater number of completions.

Shopping Cart2

Pictures, Pictures, Pictures

Shoppers respond to sensory stimulation. People like to take things off the shelf and inspect them. Because that option isn’t available for e-commerce sites, you need to compensate for this deficiency as best as possible. One way to ensure better conversions is to include pictures not only in the store but also in the cart. Shoppers, especially those new to e-commerce want to verify and re-verify that they have made the correct choice.

Photo Credit: Bygeralt on Pixabay. CC0 License.

Many of these customers are lost if you force them to use their browsers back buttons to do so. By placing a picture of the item to be purchased within the shopping cart, much of this need is alleviated, meaning lower abandonment for you.

Provide Total Cost Estimates Early

One of the most overlooked concerns of customers is their distrust of e-commerce sites when it comes to shipping. Maybe it’s the years of telemarketers selling garbage products for close to nothing and then making their profit on the shipping. Whatever the reason, it is important to allay fears of hidden costs as soon as possible by providing your users with a total cost estimate earlier rather than later. Is there something to be said for bringing the customer in with a low-ball lead price? Yes. But after the leader it is important to let customers know what they are really paying as early as possible so as to give a few moments to acclimate to the increase.

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Websites for Small Businesses

In first World countries the Internet is now a huge part of our everyday life. We use it at work and we use it at home. It is all around us. A person from a First World country would be in a minority if they said they had not paid for anything across the Internet or bought a product or service online through an eCommerce store. In a August, 2017 study it was found that in Europe, in 2016, residents in European Nations spent $132 Billion Euros (USD $180 Billion) through eCommerce Websites. In the next 5 years the amount spent through eCommerce Websites is set to increase by 25% per annum to an estimated $406.8 Billion Euros (USD $554 Billion) by 2021. It should be noted this only covers Europe and does not factor in the US, Asia and other emerging regions, which would easily double or triple those figures.

So, clearly there is a huge market place online that needs to be serviced by online shops and websites selling products and services. As a business owner I can see a huge market for established businesses in the real World to move into the World of eCommerce and sell online.

ECommerce Website Partners should be assessed for their suitability to deliver a quality ongoing relationship that will be to your company’s best benefit for the long term.

1. A strong history of developing eCommerce Websites with a good portfolio and testimonials
2. Hosting with reliable and strong Internet connections
3. Good design and development team with >5 people to ensure adequate support in the future
4. Online Marketing Professionals with proven history of success and a good portfolio of established clients – THE single most important feature of any shop – getting visitors through the doors!

As a business owner I would describe an eCommerce store with Search Engine Optimisation implemented as a store with many, many different doorways into it. ECommerce websites owners should recognize that the more people you get to come to your website the more sales you will make. Search Engine Optimisation does exactly this, targeting certain phrase that when searched on in Google your website shows up for. Now it should be noted that the higher to the top you finish the more website visitors you are likely to get. It has been shown in studies that 80% of all people who search on a term go to one, or more, of the results on the first page (the top 10) results. So the goal with SEO is to get on the first page and in the top 10 results shown for a given search term. So your goal in choosing a partner should be focused on good website design but more on online marketing and how they can help you spread the word and get visitors to your website.

An E-Commerce website provides many benefits to the underlying business. It gives the business an extra dimension and as mentioned above if implemented with SEO, many doorways into the shop. With more customers comes more revenues – everyone recognizes this fact. An eCommerce Shop also provides Interstate, National and even global reach for your product or service. With a Global eCommerce system you can reach the farthest reaches of the World and supply product, creating a Global Brand Name in new emerging markets.

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