Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest struggles eCommerce businesses faced this year. I expect to see this trend continue in 2022 as more companies start selling their products online.
Cart abandonment happens when a shopper adds an item to their virtual shopping cart but leaves before paying. You may be shocked to learn that the average abandonment rate across all industries is 67.91%. In other words, over half of all potential sales walk out the metaphorical door before they complete their order.
It’s a good idea to keep an eye on your abandonment rate because the percentage of potential customers that leave before placing an order directly impacts your sales, customer loyalty, and engagement.
Today, I will share several tips we use across our brands to reduce our cart abandonment rate. If you’re looking to keep more people on your site, increase sales, and build a dedicated audience, keep reading!
Simplify Your Pricing Structure
Let’s talk about the number one reason potential customers leave a site after adding items to their shopping cart; additional costs. Research shows that 56% of people who abandoned their carts blamed unexpected expenses as the main contributing factor.
There are several things you can do to simplify your pricing structure. First, I suggest adding a visible shopping cart that visitors can see all across your site. When people can see their exact total while shopping, they are less likely to back out when they get to the final checkout page.
If you sell physical goods, I recommend adding a shipping calculator to your site so shoppers can see the product’s price, taxes, and shipping, all in one place.
Your visitors should also know if you’re running any special promotions or have a deal on free shipping after spending a specified amount. Make banners, buttons, and promo codes pop across your website, and you’ll likely see more consumers who are on the fence become customers.
Streamline Your Checkout Page
When was the last time you went through your own checkout page? Many business owners and marketers go through the process once but fail to continuously improve their checkout flow. As a result, many shoppers leave without completing their purchases.
We’ve all tried to place an order online, only to face a clunky, uninspired checkout page. Odds are, you left that website and didn’t return. You never want to put your audience in a situation where they need to leave because the process is too complicated or takes a long time.
One way to improve your checkout page is to minimize the steps users have to take to finalize their orders. The addition of a guest checkout option is an excellent way to streamline your payment page. I also recommend encouraging users to create an account for an incentive, like a discount on their first purchase.
You should also remove unnecessary fields from your checkout form and use autofill when applicable. If someone has already made an account, they shouldn’t have to enter all their information every time they place an order on your site. In fact, many people will leave if they think they need to start from scratch every time they buy something from your online store.
If your payment page isn’t mobile-responsive, you’ll want to make a change as soon as possible. Over half of all internet traffic comes from smartphones, so if your checkout page isn’t optimized for these users, you may see an unusually high abandonment rate.
Make it Easy for Visitors to Trust You
Businesses need visitors to trust them if they hope to succeed. How long do you think a brick-and-mortar store would stay in business if no one in the community trusted or respected them? The answer is; not long.
The good news is you can take steps to build trust and skyrocket sales by establishing social proof across your site. Social proof in marketing is whenb2 shoppers to trust a business or spokesperson if they see other people who have had good experiences in the past.
Reviews and testimonials are the most common forms of social proof, so you’ll want to make sure all of your products have on-site reviews from real customers. But that’s not the only way you can make it easy for visitors to trust you.
Trust badges are another powerful form of social proof that you can use to win over your audience. You’re likely familiar with trust badges. Basically, they are small seals of approval from big-name companies like PayPal, McAfee, and Norton.
Consumers know and respect these brands, so when they see a business is approved by one or all of these companies, they are more likely to place an order instead of abandoning their cart. Research shows that adding trust badges to your checkout form can improve your conversion rate by an impressive 42%!
Email Subscribers After They Leave
There will be times when an existing subscriber or customer abandons their cart. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the quality of your site and has more to do with their schedule. For instance, if someone is mid-order on their lunch break, they may abandon their cart to go back to work.
The thing is, they may be tired after their long workday and forget to place their order. If you’re there to give them a friendly nudge, you can convince many of these shoppers to become customers.
My suggestion is to send 3 email reminders within a week of the abandonment. We prefer to send one an hour after they leave, then one day later, and finally, we send the last one a week after they abandoned their cart. Studies show that using this strategy can help you bring in 69% more orders!
You can stop the campaign if the subscriber comes back and places their order after the first email. If not, allow it to run and see if you can convince them to return to your site.
You’ll improve your odds of success by personalizing the subject lines of the emails you send out. You may want to include things like the customer’s name, the product, and the fact that they left without completing their order. It may take some time to get your personalization strategy right, but it’s worth it. Creating unique subject lines for your customers can improve your open rate by a whopping 26%.
Use Social Media Retargeting
Finally, I want to talk a little about social media retargeting. I bet you’ve browsed an online store, then added an item to your cart, only to leave and see an ad for the same product later on Facebook. This is known as social media retargeting. Facebook and Instagram are the two most popular platforms for retargeting.
As it stands now, over 2.74 billion people use Facebook, and 1 billion use Instagram. In other words, you can safely assume that your target audience and previous visitors are out there waiting to hear from your brand.
To use these ads to reach people who’ve visited your site, you’ll need to set up a campaign on Facebook Ads. You can tweak your target audience based on existing visitors, interests, and more. Use these settings to reach prospects who abandoned their cart.
You’ll want to put plenty of time and effort into your marketing copy. Remember that people don’t spend a ton of time reading ads, so you have to get your message out quickly and directly. You may want to borrow from the email marketing tips mentioned above and include elements of personalization. Research shows that 80% of shoppers say they are more likely to engage with a business if they offer personalized content and promotions!
If you nail your messaging and reach your target audience, there’s an excellent chance you can turn a shopper who was almost lost into a loyal brand advocate.
Final Thoughts
Reducing shopping cart abandonment is a time-consuming process but one you should definitely pursue if you want to increase your sales and build your audience. The advice presented here today will help you develop a framework that you can use to capture lost shoppers and gradually grow your business.
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