Decreasing Those Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

Shopping cart abandonment seems like a bizarre idea when you consider it in the brick and mortar sense. Imagine going into your favorite shop, and seeing customers filling up their carts only to leave them alone sitting in the middle of the store. While it may seem strange in a physical sense, shopping cart abandonment is an extremely common practice while shopping in the digital world. Shopping cart abandonment is so common online, in fact, that a Barilliance study conducted in 2018 showed that the cart abandonment rate for 2017 was a whopping 78.65%.

Shopping cart abandonment can be decreased, and a few effective strategies to use to curb abandonment are:

• Show your credibility – Sometimes, when someone is shopping at a new ecommerce site, they may get to the part of the process where they are prompted for their personal information and suddenly feel uncomfortable sharing. Show your credibility, your security, and your trust seals to build credibility.

• Boost your payment options – Offering different payment options can put those card abandonments on the decline. Convenient customer service should always be a priority, and this includes offering their favorite ways to pay.

• Transparency is key – A big reason many carts are abandoned is due to a lack of transparency. A person will fill their cart, move to checkout, and only then find out that shipping charges are what they deem to be unreasonable. Straightforward shipping charges and transparency shows them what they need to know before filling up.

• Offer seamless checkout – Not every customer wishes to become a member, and not every member wishes to remember their login credentials for every purchase. A seamless guest checkout experience can make all the difference.

• Optimize for mobile – Online shopping has moved from laptops and PCs to mobile smartphones, and smartphone shopping cart abandonment is 10% higher than on a computer. A seamless mobile experience lessens the likelihood carts will be abandoned.