Shopping cart abandonment is a global problem that has been creating problems for online retailers around the world. Cart abandonment has a major bearing on the sales success of any eCommerce store. However, there are ways to control it. Jorge Zuñiga Blanco, a successful entrepreneur and eCommerce expert from Costa Rica, discusses the abandoned shopping cart and how to prevent it from happening.
Abandonment of the shopping cart is a problem for all different regions of the world. While it is 74.0% for North American countries, the figure is slightly higher for Latin American countries at 75.3%. Similarly, for European countries, cart abandonment rates were found to be 70.9% while they were 76.3% for Asian-Pacific countries. The overall car abandonment rate comprising all regions was found to be 74.52%.
Considering the reasons for shopping cart abandonment and the rate of cart abandonment in different regions within a wide range of industries, the problem cannot be ignored at all if a retailer wants to avoid cart abandonment and improve sales and conversions in their eCommerce store. Following several practices will help reduce the percentage. Start by reducing overhead in your store. In a competitive business environment, the availability of products at an attractive price is the only thing that can drive conversions and bulk sales. However, the cost of a product is often increased by unknown overheads that are present on an eCommerce site.
Add pop-up exit attempt. “Output pop-ups offer you an excellent opportunity to reduce the cart abandonment rate and maximize conversions,” asserts Zuñiga. “Exit pop-ups work when a user is detected as intending to leave the store and presents them with a pop-up window that contains an offer or offer.”
Provide guest registration. Most consumers recover from the store if they are presented with a mandatory registration during the checkout process. This isn’t a big step if you want to reduce the cart abandonment rate in your store. However, avoid mandatory registration and offer a Guest Checkout option to your visitors so they don’t face any obstacles between their checkouts.
Establish trust with security credentials. Explains Zuñiga, “When customers provide you with their sensitive payment details, they trust you. Similarly, you can earn their trust by displaying the security badges/logos somewhere on the checkout page to ensure that their data is safe.”
Improve the functionality of your shopping cart. It is important to have a shopping cart that is able to make changes to the cart quickly. There are several key features that must be present in an eCommerce platform to enhance the functionality of a shopping cart. You need to provide large, detailed and functional images of the products, offer easy and fast navigation for a better online shopping experience, allow the quick purchase of products through a one-page checkout process and the possibility to apply discount coupons and gift cards.
Improve the loading time of your online store. According to the recent Hosting Data Report, One second of your website’s load time delay can result in a 7% loss in conversion, and 40% of web users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This explains that people are not patient enough when it comes to website load time. The average load time of a website is said to be around two seconds. “This is definitely a big setback for eCommerce store owners,” states Zuñiga, “as a slow-loading website can affect their conversions and sales. To improve the load time of your eCommerce site, the following site optimization techniques should be implemented at the most serious level.”
Make the payment process simplified. Simplify the checkout process by restricting the number of checkout fields. People prefer to shop online because of the ease of purchasing products, a variety of options available in one place, the option of delivering products on the customer’s premises and much more. However, if this is stolen from online shoppers, it will certainly affect the sales of an online store. An easy and fast shopping process encourages online shoppers to make a purchase of a product through a particular eCommerce site. Therefore, ignoring it would be the biggest mistake for any eCommerce store owner.
Offer products at an affordable price. Bring more revenue to your store by valuing your products more effectively. When competition is too high in a particular business segment, it makes sense to present your products in the most competent way. You must have a clear idea about the price of your competitors and you must reprocess your products accordingly. Once customers consider your products to be the most affordable, they will love to buy them in your online store, regardless of the competitors available in the market, as long as you do not compromise on quality.
Lastly, use web push notifications. Web Push Notifications is the latest approach that online businesses follow to target users who leave their cart. With the help of web push notifications, you can send abandoned cart notifications to users who don’t complete their purchase and remind them of pending items in the cart.
