If you are an online retailer looking for online success, focus on how to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Or else, you will not gain momentum in the market. For your best benefit, listed below are few tips in reducing shopping cart abandonment.
1. Allow Customers to Return to the Cart. What if your customer leaves the cart, with the intents of returning to it later? Allowing customers to return to the shopping cart and finish thew purchase is a great option to increase sales conversion. It is inconvenient for a consumer to search for a product he or she likes to buy. There are two types of shopping carts that can be used by online merchants to reduce abandonment of carts: perpetual and persistent shopping cart.
2. Guest Checkout. 23 percent of abandoned shopping carts can be attributed to the need of registering an account on the store before checking out the product, a survey made by Forrester Research reported. Consider allowing guest checkout and give option of registering after the order is made. The other way is around will not do best for your online store. Nonetheless, make the announcement clear and conspicuous. Placing it near the login will boost results.
3. Security Assurance. Online transactions scare off first time customers. Winning their trust and confidence that personal information and details shared are not susceptible to attacks and theft is very important. Using SSL certificates, displaying security badges or logos, and adding credit card secured payment icons can help to increase conversion and reduce shopping abandonment.
4. Contact Details. Put yourself in the customer's shoes, what will you feel if you cannot directly contact store managers about your order? Contact details, and sometimes live chat, can mean conversion. Questions during checkout, if unattended, may result to abandonment of shopping cart. No one would want to pull through on uncertain things.
5. Trigger by Email. When the customer leaves the shopping cart, it is time for a persistent and rigid campaign. Put this in mind, you are already 75% of the sale – and stopping when conversion is almost certain is stupid marketing. Trigger the 'need' of the product on the mind of the customer by sending emails. Coupons and bargains can be made to trigger the buying behavior of customer.
6. Offer Flat or Free Shipping. 44% of online shoppers leave shopping carts due to high shipping costs; and another 22 percent leave the shopping cart because of the failure to declare shipping details. Customers don't want to be surprised with the shipping method and cost which results to shopping cart abandonment. Similar study revealed 73% of shoppers consider free shipping as a critical factor in deciding to purchase or not. If you cannot provide free shipping, at least declare details and make your offer easy to find. Catchy free shipping icons can hype up shoppers behavior.
7. Variety of Payment Options. To avoid disenfranchising a portion of your market, have variety of payment options. Aside from adding credit card processing, you may also consider third-party payment processing online sites like PayPal. You don't have to isolate the store from a set of categorical market only, for instance, Visa-card holders.
8. Product Images. A study made by E-Tailing revealed most shoppers are mindful of the image quality, zoom functionality, angle views, and colors of the product. High-quality images can do wonders on your online store to avoid shopping cart abandonment. Using the right template is an essential factor in providing quality images and varied functionality.
8. Product Images. A study made by E-Tailing revealed most shoppers are mindful of the image quality, zoom functionality, angle views, and colors of the product. High-quality images can do wonders on your online store to avoid shopping cart abandonment. Using the right template is an essential factor in providing quality images and varied functionality.
9. Show-Off Sales and Discounts. Online stores with special sections for sales and discounted product are very successful. Consumer behavior dictates hype-up buying on products that are on sale or on a discount. Keeping a prominent banner or logo for discounts you are giving will attract shoppers and increase conversion sales.
In the image, you can see the section of male clothing products that are all on sale. It is a promotional discount for the holidays.
In the image, you can see the section of male clothing products that are all on sale. It is a promotional discount for the holidays.
10. Encourage Reviews/ Feedback of Products. What if customers don't like the product, how can they tell that? Valuing the feedback or review of customers on products they have bought can encourage trust and confidence on the store. It is also good to provide special rewards when they make reviews on products you are selling. Plus, reviews can really encourage conversion.
11. Tell Unavailability of Products. Another problem of most online retailers is not disclosing if a product is not available. Try to honest and straight. If you cannot provide the product, tell the consumer straight and give him or her options. If you allow the person to reach the four-page checkout page before you pull a notice of unavailability, you will lose a potential customer.
12. Keep Checkout Pages Load Fast. Time is vital in marketing. If the last page of the four-page checkout process has an error, it is inconvenient and hassle for customer to repeat the entire process. What will he or she do? He or she will abandon the cart and look for another store. Using CDN and fast servers can avoid errors of checkout pages; plus, you can hire technicians to constantly check the system health.
