Shopping cart abandonment is a common problem for many eCommerce stores. You design an attractive website and populate it with a number of awesome products. You spend your important time, money and effort on internet marketing, SEO, PPC campaign to drive internet traffic to your website. And you can get success to find fruitful visitors those are interested to purchase your product, they clicked on the shopping cart, then abandon the shopping cart and leave the website.
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There is a possibility that may be 62% to 69% of shoppers will abandon your shopping cart. According to Baymard Institute, the average abandonment rate is 68.53%. The primary culprit for shopping cart abandonment is checkout process, or shipping cost which made the total cost more than expected, or prices hidden behind the registration wall, or shipping charges unclear on product pages. There are many different factors those are responsible for a user to leave shopping journey on your website before finishing the shopping cycle.
It is fact that many people are interested to purchase product from your website those are abandoning your shopping cart. If you are an eCommerce merchant then you should not ignore this situation because there are high chances to missing out your potential new and repeat customers. If you can improve your website checkout process, then you can improve your sales ratio by a huge amount of margin.
Below are the top 10 reasons for abandoning shopping cart.
1. Complicated checkout process
The checkout process should simple and quick. You need to assume that your potential customer is interested in active shopping and should not feel tired. Your checkout process should not time consuming. If there are many forms to fill out or there is repetitive or complicated process, then the impatient person will abandon the cart and leave the website. It is beneficial if you provide the customer with guest checkout.
2. Expensive shipping
The most common reason to kill the conversion is a high charge for shipping. PayPal says 43% shoppers abandoned shopping carts because the shipping charges were high. Customers are shocked when they see the final amount is too high after the shipping cost included in the total. These days, many eCommerce companies offering free delivery on the specific amount of the purchase order. It is beneficial if you provide a wide variety of shipping options.
3. Price problem
High price could be a major problem for your eCommerce website. A customer who wants to purchase a mobile phone will check all eCommerce sites for competitive advantages including low price. Some companies displaying international currency instead of local currency and forces to their customers to deal with the exchange rate on their own. It can decrease customer’s motivation.
4. Shipping cost display later
Customers believe in transparency. The customer cannot accept any additional cost at the later stage of the shopping cycle. Some eCommerce entrepreneur does not prefer to show the shipping cost at the earlier stage due to the high cost of the international shipping. It is needless to say that customers hate this and they quick to leave your web site.
5. Forced for form fill up
Collecting customers’ email addresses can useful for future communication, but forcing them to register an account or sign up the form is a big mistake. In most of the cases, people just want to purchase and leave the site, they do not want to open an account or give any details to you for future communication. It should not compulsory and tedious process.
6. Lack of payment options
Offering only single payment option can encourage to your customer for abandoning the shopping cart and leave the website. Multiple payment options can give flexibility for the transaction. There are some popular credit card and payment company that you should allow for the transaction. Some of them are PayPal, Master Card, and Visa Card. ECommerce giants Amazon and Alibaba are providing multiple payment options on their websites. It is beneficial if your payment cycle is mobile friendly and customer can purchase from their mobile.
7. Lack of security
Security and trust are the most important for your eCommerce business. Security issues can deter your customers from buying the products. The use of trusted payment gateways, secure socket layer (SSL), and clearly displayed privacy policies help to increase security and trust. Your customer wants to secure their bank data, because mostly they have some experience of online fraud. You should display the certification and demonstrate your PCI compliance.
8. Lack of product information
Some buyers have clear ideas in their mind about their desired product they want to buy. While others expect to search product information and comparison on the eCommerce store. When they do not find sufficient information which can satisfy them, then they decide to leave the website or they continue their search to find more information. Product description should describe the product’s features and it should have clear & enough information. Confusing product information can create confusion in the customer’s mind, which can lead to leaving the site.
9. Web site crashed or timeout
Your web site server should work for all the 24 hours. Your website should not crash during any stage of the shopping cycle. Once a customer leaves your website due to crash of your website or time out of your website, will never come back again. Sometimes there is a possibility if heavy internet traffic to your website then your website can timeout. Make sure your hosting is matching your traffic. Invest in reliable server, platform and hosting.
10. Lack of customer support
Excellent customer support is necessary for an eCommerce business. Your customer may contact you for more information about your product or service. You should display clear contact information on all important pages of your website. Your customer can easily find customer support information which includes phone numbers and email address. Your customer may contact you before the crucial checkout process. Your instant and excellent support can give confidence to your customer to buy your product.
To reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates, you should use different ways. Once your customer abandoning the shopping cart then you can use below different solutions, such as collecting people’s email address, re-marketing, offering coupons, and free delivery.
Shopping cart abandonment is the sources of loss for eCommerce business owners. By failing to fix above 10 checkout issues, many eCommerce website entrepreneurs are loosing millions of dollars. There is a possible recovery rate from 20-40% through solving above 10 shopping carts abandoning reasons. The amount of recovery rate will give you success in the business of eCommerce.
