According to a recent study, up to 70% of online shoppers who place items in their cart typically do not proceed with the purchase.

That’s an alarming number for everyone associated with eCommerce. While fraudulent activity is a problem for online stores, abandoned carts are even more damaging. Abandoned shopping carts are a prime example of a data distortion that can bring down conversion rates. Costs associated with gaining new customers are also driven upward.

The contents of an individual’s shopping cart include an item that was added to a wish without the intention of making a purchase. In fact, December is the worst month of the year for shopping cart abandonment because of all the last-minute Christmas and Black Friday deals.

Cart abandonment is a common and costly problem for all eCommerce websites. However, following a few steps can reduce your attrition rate and boost your earnings with just a few easy tweaks.

What Is Shopping Cart Abandonment?

A shopping cart abandonment occurs when a customer starts the checkout process but does not finish it. An item is considered “abandoned” if it has been placed in the shopping cart but not purchased. In e-commerce, it ranks among the highest in importance as a key performance indicator (KPI).

How to Calculate Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

If you want to calculate the shopping cart abandonment rate, use this formula:

You can use this to see how many people abandoned carts during a specific time period. Customers who started purchases but did not finish them can be segmented into two groups:

• Those who completed their purchases
• Those who abandoned their carts

Why Is Shopping Cart Abandonment Bad?

Cart abandonment leads to wasted revenue and unrealized potential. Think about how much work you put into promoting your Shopify store, photographing your products, and writing detailed descriptions. We can’t stand the thought that so much time and energy were wasted on useless carts.

Customers who abandon their carts have received a negative impression of your company. This drastically reduces the likelihood of their next visit. Let’s have a look at why this is happening and what can be done about it.

How to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Retailers can reduce cart abandonment by taking some steps, including providing all the information shoppers need and making purchases simple across all devices.

1.     Build A Full-Fledged Retail Platform

Customers are more willing to share their email addresses if they are confident they will receive valuable service in exchange. Once you have this information, you may send customers relevant newsletters and discount vouchers.

The good news is that opt-in discounts can be used as an incentive by nearly any business, regardless of the products or services they sell. The number of people on your email marketing list will probably increase due to an offer like this. If you’re looking for a solution to help you register new wholesale clients and manage wholesale pricing, user roles, etc, it is included in one of the package choices of AIOB2B:B2B Wholesale Plugin for WooCommerce simplifies creating a wholesaler registration form. You can use the AIOB2B platform to discover wholesale solutions with the help of customizable forms.

2.     Provide Descriptive Calls to Action

It’s important to ensure that customers know what to do after adding items to their carts. Find out if they successfully added the items to their shopping cart first. Although some sites may try to be sneaky about it, it is suggested to keep it simple to use; it usually works best.

This notice displayed by myCred explicitly verifies the products added and gives the customer further instructions. Optionally bypassing the checkout counter is also a nice touch.

myCred Add To Cart CTA

The most prominent links on the shopping cart page are the CTAs and Call To Action.

The website for myCred is using these CTAS to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Tip: Customers are less likely to abandon a purchase if given a clear next step.

3.     Create a Simple Shopping Cart Interface

When looking through the various items in the shopping cart, customers might be confused and frustrated. For many customers, this is another reason to give up on a purchase in progress.

That’s why it’s important to make it simple for customers to look around your shop and add items they like to their shopping carts. If you want to make shopping carts easier in the store, you can do so with a few different strategies.

Find out what page a visitor was on before they left your website and analyze why they left. Making sure a consumer doesn’t have to use the back button after adding an item to their cart is a great way to keep them. It would be best if you made it simple for customers to find the shopping cart and go through the checkout process whenever they choose.

4.     Don’t Charge For Shipping

The high shipping cost is one factor that leads customers to abandon their carts in online stores.

Depending on your offering, shipping costs can be low enough that you’d want to subsidize yourself. Customers’ mental state changes drastically when they peruse their checkout forms.

Many successful eCommerce sites offer free shipping to keep customers from abandoning their shopping carts without making a purchase.

Tip: If you can’t ship your products for free, at least be clear about the shipping prices during the checkout process and show a break of shipping charges.

5.     Checkout With Trust Signs

Customers’ lack of trust is another issue that causes them to abandon their shopping carts. If visitors feel unsafe making a purchase, you might expect a decline in conversions. Even if more and more consumers are comfortable using their credit cards online, it’s still important to add trust signals during the checkout process and elsewhere on your website to allay the fears of any hesitant buyers.

Tips:

• To increase conversions, you should incorporate social proof into the purchasing process.
• If you want to accept payments, use a reputable service like PayPal, Amazon Payments, etc.
• Put verification badges and trust seals on the checkout page.
• Provide your contact details for customer care on the page.

Providing a reliable return policy or a money-back guarantee can also help ease customers’ minds. People are more likely to make purchases from you if they trust you and know the product may be readily returned if it doesn’t suit their needs. Some customers may require reassurance to make the final purchase, and changing the button copy in the shopping cart to “Secure Checkout” could be exactly the ticket.

6.     Send Emails To Abandoned Carts

Improving and optimizing your website’s shopping cart isn’t enough to prevent cart abandonment. Even if you employ all of the aforementioned strategies to reduce online shopping cart abandonment, some customers will still choose to leave your site before completing their purchase.

Cart retrieval services can assist with this, allowing you to keep attempting to win over customers even after they have left your e-commerce website.

If a customer enters their email address before leaving your site, you can send them reminders to complete their transaction. You can offer a promotional code for a discounted price.

Simple as it may seem, this strategy can help you re-engage potential customers; in fact, 60% of shoppers who receive a personalized cart abandonment email do so within 24 hours of receiving it.

7.     Simplify Your Order/Billing Form

Everyone knows that when people want to buy their favorite items, the most frustrating thing they want is to spend time filling out a lengthy form. This results in many online retailers abandoning their shopping carts.

Therefore, improving the user experience requires developing a billing/order form that streamlines the entire checkout procedure. More customers are likely to complete the transaction due to this rather than leaving the item in their cart and never checking out.

8.     Give Your Customer Multiple Payment Options

Let’s imagine you spent some time looking, but after perusing a few online stores, you found just what you needed. Sadly, after completing the purchase process, you discover the website lacks the necessary payment gateway. After such an upsetting situation, the user may never return to the site.

To prevent this type of customer frustration, you should ensure that most of your e-commerce site is integrated with all the major payment gateways. Contact Form 7 Square is a WordPress plugin that enables customers to pay via the Square payment gateway using contact form 7. This plugin allows you to create contact forms and accept Credit Card payments from consumers via the Square payment gateway.

9.     Incorporate Loyalty Points

Creating a loyalty program or offering loyalty points is a great way to thank clients who consistently buy from your brand. Creating a customer loyalty program is a surefire way to decrease cart abandonment. The more customers buy from or interact with your business, the more perks they’ll be eligible for through your loyalty program. With loyalty points, customers will be more likely to stick with you and never switch to a competitor.

Implement a high-quality multi-tiered loyalty program to reward your clientele with myCred WooCommerce Plus. With this plugin, members can rise through the ranks and earn better benefits and perks as they accumulate more points. This loyalty program plugin is easy to install and configure, and your customers can start earning rewards in just a few minutes.

Conclusion

Customers not completing their purchases is one of the most typical factors contributing to a decrease in revenue. Even while it’s not feasible to stop it from happening entirely, these are the steps you can take to reduce the risk of it happening. Customers are less likely to walk away from their wholesale shopping carts when they are presented with coupon codes and other savings opportunities.