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Cart abandonment occurs when a customer exits your website right before checkout, leaving selected items behind. Online retailers lose around 18 billion dollars each year due to lost potential orders, representing almost 70% of online buyers

As digital experts, we know how much time, money and effort are put into guiding precious sales leads to the bottom of the funnel. To lose them moments before closing can not only be extremely frustrating, it’s also detrimental to your business. 

Thankfully, some of the potential sales are recoverable and the solution often lies in your website design. The first step to recovery is understanding why you’re experiencing a high cart abandonment rate in the first place. So here is a list of the top 5 reasons your customers opt-out of their transactions and how to stop and/or prevent it.

Why is understanding cart abandonment important for your business?

The answer is simple: to help you make more money. A Statista study showed that 25% of the shoppers who leave your online store will purchase the same product they left behind from a competitor. Putting the right tools in place will not only increase your sales but also the potential for repeat business and happier, more satisfied customers.

5 reasons for cart abandonment

  1. Unexpected shipping costs 
  2. Requiring account creation at checkout
  3. Customer not ready to purchase
  4. Untrustworthy website or payment security
  5. Long checkout 

1. Unexpected shipping costs at checkout 

Put yourself in the shoes of your customers. Nobody likes bad surprises, especially when it comes to money. Unexpected or high shipping costs are the number one reason your customer might exit your site in search of a more affordable option.

How can you compete with free, one-day delivery knowing that one of the main incentives for purchase is free shipping? A simple tactic adopted by many savvy eCommerce businesses is to set a cap of profitability that customers must reach in order to earn free shipping.

Another way of lowering shipping fees is to increase your products’ retail prices by bundling in extra costs. Although it’s sometimes impossible to remove extra costs entirely or decrease them significantly, stay transparent—display the price on top of your page, offer various delivery options such as free pick up. You can also reduce the weight of your packages by switching to a more lightweight material.

2. Asking users to create an account at checkout 

Another important factor is how efficient your checkout process is. Asking for too much unnecessary information causes about 24% of online customers to leave the checkout not only out of inconvenience but also an unwillingness to share personal details.

Give your users a guest checkout option and only ask for the essential. Keep in mind that even returning customers might forget their password—an accelerated checkout is optimal for everyone. You can even simplify things further by implementing tools such as Shop Pay, Pay Pal or Apple Pay that will automatically complete forms for your customers.

3. Your customer is not ready to purchase yet

Some things are simply out of your control. Your potential customer might not be willing to purchase right away and wants to shop for different options before making a decision. Certain categories of goods are more prone to be viewed without getting through checkout, notably women’s clothing, lingerie and leather. Demographics also come into play: 25-34-year-olds are the most indecisive age group followed by the 18-24-year-olds.

However, cart abandonment doesn’t have to automatically be equal to lost sales if you have the right systems in place. Most customers in this category are shopping for later consideration. An “items left in basket’’ reminder email can help draw them back to your website to complete the transaction. Remarketing can also be highly effective in this scenario.

4. Your customer doubts your website or payment security

17% of online shoppers will not go through with their purchase if they deem the website or payment systems to be untrustworthy. Understandably, millions of eCommerce customers are victims of financial or information fraud each year. To reinforce your customers’ trust, make sure your website possesses these characteristics:

    • Professional design and layout free of mistakes or bugs
    • Trustworthy eCommerce platform
    • Display of what security plug-in is used on your website
    • Highlighted customer warranties
    • Customer reviews and testimonials

Find out more about preventative eCommerce solutions here.

5. The checkout process is too long

Hand in hand with reason number 2, about a third of shoppers abandon their cart due to an excessively long or complicated checkout process. Optimize your checkout flow and design to ensure your users can go from browsing to purchase confirmation in as few clicks as possible.

Avoid making your customers enter information twice and reduce the amount of form fills as much as you can. Offer one-click checkout to further increase the speed of the process.

Turn fruitless baskets into successful transactions 

Any online business owner has experienced a certain rate of cart abandonment but yours can go down from now on. Understanding your customer experience is key—nobody enjoys high and/or unclear shipping costs, unnecessary steps to checkout and handing out sensitive details to a website that doesn’t appear 100% legit. With that in mind and the right tools in place, you can prevent a good portion of your website users from exiting without completing a transaction.

Want to optimize your website and lower your abandonment rate?

Schedule a meeting with one of our experts to see how we can bring your online store to the next level.