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5 Most Common Reasons for Abandoned Carts And How to Fix It
What is the one thing you hate when shopping online? What do you expect after having spent hours finding the right product? It’s probably a fast, convenient and easy checkout process. Now if that’s too complicated and frustrating, you’ll probably give up and leave. And many online shoppers do just that. A study conducted by Baymard institute analysis showed that 67.91% of online shoppers abandon their carts.
If you are here, it is probably because you want to know why your customers abandon carts. You may also want to know how to stop them from doing so. Well, never fear, because this article will give you a quick guide on how and why customers leave their carts abandoned and what you can do about it.
- Lack of Payment Options
A common reason for abandoned carts is a lack of payment options. If customers can't pay with the method they prefer, they'll often abandon their cart rather than search around for an alternative. Customers will weigh the options and then choose what's most convenient for them: do I want to use my credit card or PayPal? Do I want to give my email address or just pay on the spot?
It's up to you as a retailer to make sure that it's easy for customers to buy from your store. If they're forced into making only one choice (or paying in cash), they may look elsewhere instead.
Your customers all have their preferred means of paying. If you don't offer your customers their preferred method of payment, it's likely they won't finish their purchase. Therefore, your cart abandonment rates should decrease as you add more payment options.
In order to define payment options, it is crucial to have a good understanding of your target audience. Analyze your target market's demographics to find out what types of payment options you should provide.
We advise you to provide at least the most common payment options for your target demographic. However, it's a good idea to keep adding new ones on a regular basis. Digital wallets like PayPal, Google Pay, and others, as well as Cash on Delivery, should be included in addition to traditional payment methods like credit and debit cards.
- Long Checkout Process
It’s a fact that the longer your checkout process is, the more likely it is that customers will abandon their carts. According to a study by Baymard, most abandoned shopping carts are due to issues with checkout and payment processes. In fact, nearly 50% of shoppers believe they should take no more than 4 minutes to complete their purchase.
For this reason, it’s important to reduce steps in your checkout process and use tools like one-page checkouts instead of having multiple pages where users have to click through each one individually.
Form filling is the worst part of online shopping so if the checkout process is too complicated or tedious, customers will leave.
If your checkout process has several steps, a progress indicator could also help speed things up. For one, it helps customers understand how many steps are involved and make decision-making faster.
A progress indicator indicates checkout phases by using a mini-map. It incorporates visual indicators that show which stages are happening and which are complete.
Most e-commerce sites display it on their checkout page towards the top or bottom. You could also have a floating progress indicator that follows the user down as they complete checkout.
Using tools like these can keep consumers engaged and help prevent cart abandonment.
- The Website is Too Slow
When you're shopping online, your first impression of a store is often the website. If it takes too long to load or if it's not responsive on mobile devices, it can lead customers to abandon their carts in frustration.
Many shoppers expect that when they visit an e-commerce site, they'll be able to find what they're looking for within two seconds and make their purchase quickly and easily. If a page takes longer than that to load or has navigation issues that make it difficult to browse products, this will drive shoppers away from the site altogether.
If you’re using Shopify, here’s our quick and easy guide on Boosting Shopify Store Speed.
- Shipping Costs are Too High
High shipping costs have long been a source of dissatisfaction for online customers, and it should come as no surprise that they are a leading cause of abandoned shopping carts.
The extra added sum at the last checkout stage involuntarily leads customers to abandon their cart. Customers are more likely to complete their purchases if you provide free delivery. This can help you minimize cart abandonment and increase sales.
If you can’t provide free shipping, it might prevent customers from checking out. If a customer puts an item in their cart and they see that the total price will be higher than expected (due to shipping costs), chances are they'll abandon their cart entirely.
You can avoid this problem by making sure you're offering reasonable rates on shipping. Shopify has a built-in feature that allows you to set up shipping zones or regions so that customers know exactly how much they'll pay in advance. You might also be able to offer discounts on shipping or provide free shipping for a minimum purchase.
- Poor Website Performance
Poor site navigation, performance and UX are major drivers of abandoned carts, as well as overall site abandonment. A user should be able to get where they want to go on your site with ease, and the process should be simple enough that they don't get lost in the shuffle.
Customers are likely to search elsewhere for a website that offers a better user experience if your website has serious performance difficulties such as crashing and errors. If your website has these issues, customers are going to look elsewhere. You can simply visualize it yourself. You are making an effort to check out the products, but the website keeps freezing up or fails to load correctly. What action would you take?
Although little hiccups in performance are less likely to turn away consumers, they will still have an effect on their experience and should be avoided if possible.
Make sure that you routinely test and analyze the performance of your shopping cart and checkout process by evaluating load times, downtime, and responsiveness. Taking these steps will help you avoid this problem. Find any mistakes or areas of weakness in your shopping cart's functionality, and work to enhance it so that it better serves your consumers.
With regards to your navigation, here are a few tips to help out your customers:
- Keep it consistent across all pages of your website
- Make sure it matches up with the theme of your website
- If possible, make it visible at all times (even when scrolling)
- Ensure that the links go to the right pages
- Keep it organized (make sure collections are in the right categories)
If you combine the above 5 tips, you will be on your way to increasing conversions and sales on your eCommerce store.
By combining the above 5 tips, you will be on your way to increasing conversions and sales on your eCommerce store. By doing so, you will also increase customer satisfaction, customer retention, customer loyalty, and lifetime value. This can lead to an increase in referrals which helps grow your business exponentially!
Conclusion
Fixing cart abandonment is a never-ending process that requires constant monitoring and the ability to adapt quickly. However, with the right tools and mindset, you can cut down on your abandoned carts in no time.
Thanks for reading, and we hope that you found our guide helpful. We’ll see you soon with more data-driven insights into eCommerce, marketing, and design trends.
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