Autochat TeamIt’s a surprisingly warm, sunny morning in Northwest London. The local Waitrose supermarket is letting shoppers in to buy day to day supplies.
Waitrose supermarket in London – The Guardian
This has caused a considerable queue. While the last person reaches the cash till, he leaves his shopping cart near the cashier and just leaves the supermarket, without making a purchase.
The cashier is just confused by this behavior. The supermarket manager is perplexed too.
Though such a scenario rarely occurs in the real, physical world, it is rampant in the realm of online shopping.
The phenomenon of a customer simply deciding to leave an ecommerce transaction is what’s called shopping cart abandonment.
The trouble is each cart abandonment is a lost sale.
Why do shoppers abandon their carts and what can you – an online business owner – do about this?
This is the crux of this blog post guide.
In this post, you will understand:
- why people abandon their carts, and
- what can you do in terms of strategy and website to plug this problem
Let’s begin!
What do the numbers say?
Ecommerce statistics show that Cart Abandonment seems to be a major hurdle across the globe. Here’s some statistics:
- The global cart abandonment rate is 75.52%.
- 74% of North American shoppers abandon their carts. The U.S. and Canada have some of the lowest cart abandonment numbers.
- Mobile shopping carts are the most likely to be abandoned, with an 85.65% ditch rate.
- Tablet users have an abandonment rate of 80.74%.
- About 73% of desktop customers abandon their carts. While the number seems high, it is still considerably lower when compared to mobile and tablet transaction averages.
What is the opportunity cost of not addressing cart abandonment on your website?
The cost of cart abandonment is a bummer for your business. You could be losing 2 out of every 3 online sales opportunities.
Studies consistently show that over 66 percent of online shoppers abandon shopping carts during checkout.
It beggars belief that just 1 in 3 online shoppers complete the checkout process and this results in a significant amount of lost revenue.
Now that we know what’s cart abandonment costing you, let’s dig in a little further to understand the top 10 reasons why shoppers abandon their carts, and how to address each challenge.
Reason #1 No guest checkout
Did you know that 35% of transactions were dropped because the website required the user to create an account before checkout?*
2 – Guest checkout – Autochat – GrowRevenue_io
High speed internet, smart devices, and smart apps have all made our lives easy. We have access to products and services at our fingertips and can get anything delivered within a few taps or clicks.
This is the pace online experiences have to live up to.
Forcing shoppers to register, especially at the time of checkout is a bad business practice.
What you should do: allow shoppers to checkout as guests and only offer to share shipping and other updates only on signing up.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Shopify app to create a quick ‘one-click’ checkout experience.
- Here’s how you enable guest checkout on Bigcommerce
Reason #2 High shipping costs
High shipping costs are highly irritating to shoppers.
Imagine putting in a lot of effort to conduct research, select a product, add it to cart, and then find out that the shipping cost is too high.
This creates a bad brand experience and chances are you will lose this sale and the customer forever.
Did you know that 55% of consumers leave a transaction when presented with an extra shipping cost?*
What you should do: highlight transparent shipping rates right on the product page or offer better shipping deals.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a shipping management app for Bigcommerce that allows you to plug-in your FedEx or UPS accounts and claim better rates.
- Here’s a Shopify app to access a wide variety of shipping options and shop for best rates.
Reason #3 Slow delivery and limited shipping options
Fast and consumer friendly delivery options are both deal makers and deal breakers, if not done right. Customers expect to have shipping options that suit their needs and on-time delivery.
3 – Delivery options – Autochat – Multichannel Merchant
What you should do: Give customers a variety of shipping options, and the ability to customize shipping details. Let customers personalize delivery times and choose between delivery providers to get the experience they prefer.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Shopify app that offers fast shipping in the USA
- Here’s a Bigcommerce app to optimize your shipping with discounted rates and multiple shipping options
Reason #4 Poor and unsecure payment Options
Shoppers demand the highest levels of security while making payments online. They also love easy and variety of payment options as well.
4 – Payment security – Autochat – SEO Kings
Did you know that 35% of shoppers will abandon a site if it does not appear to have a security badge?*
What you should do: it isn’t enough to get all the security features on your website, you have to showcase them on your homepage, product page, and checkout pages.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Shopify app that helps you showcase security badges on your site
- Here’s another Shopify app that allows your shoppers to split payments or make partial payments securely
- Here’s a Bigcommerce app that helps you prevent and manage payment fraud
Reason #5 Comparison shopping
Customers have options when buying online. To get the best deals, customers will browse and compare pricing.
If they find a better deal elsewhere, they will abandon their shopping cart and go for the better deal with your competitor.
We need a sense of reality as well. Some shoppers will always do comparison shopping and there’s nothing much you can do about it.
In fact nearly 40% of surveyed consumers responded that they abandoned their shopping cart because they had been just browsing in the first place.*
5 – Comparison shopping – Autochat – PeNNInk
So, take the cart abandonment rates as a way to optimize the buying process and nothing more.
What you should do: Offer competitive pricing to customers, so they choose to buy from you. Offering better service, shipping, and more can also help you stand out.
You could also use exit popups with the right offers, discounts, or messaging for better sales conversion.
Here’s a detailed guide on creating your ideal exit popup strategy with the best apps. (link our blog here)
Reason #6 Complicated checkout process
A smooth checkout process is good for both the shopper (as it creates a nice buying experience) and you (as it brings you more revenue).
Did you know that 27% of carts were dropped because the checkout process was too complex or because the site was slow?*
6 – Frustrated shopper – Autochat – Tamebay
What you should do: begin by eliminating surprises. You can also showcase the progress of the checkout into a number of steps. Transparent pricing also eliminates confusion. But the general idea is to ask the shopper to make as few clicks as possible to buy your product.
Reason #7 Lack of a coherent, easily accessible returns policy
Shoppers often encounter return policy and warranty info on the checkout page. An insufficient return policy will cause them to leave and seek a better place to buy the product.
Unfortunately, complex returns are not popular with shoppers. Did you know that 80% of shoppers will not make a purchase unless there is a hassle-free return policy?*
What you should do: simplify your returns policy and make it available right on the product pages. This not only helps shoppers make informed purchasing decisions, but it also helps them build trust with your brand.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Bigcommerce app to help you manage catalog and order returns
- Here’s a Shopify app that lets you create a smooth returns experience
Reason #8 A slow and unresponsive website
Easy navigation, fast site loading, and fewer clicks to buy is the mantra for creating effective shopping experiences.
If and when your website is slow, it leads to bad user experience and might result in a loss of customers forever.
Did you know that a slow website can increase abandonment by 75%, and loyalty drops 50% when your site is slow?*
7 – Slow site – Autochat – Command C
What you should do: Begin with assessing your site’s performance. Don’t know if your site is up to speed? Here’s what you can do:
- Use Google’s own PageSpeed Insights tool to assess your ecommerce website’s performance
- And use this guide to fix the issues and score high on PageSpeed Insights
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Shopify app to help you optimize your site and content to increase loading speed
Reason #9 Lack of proactive customer Support
Many times shoppers run into tight corners. They might have questions on shipping or return policy, or on the product itself. When sufficient information isn’t available on your website, shoppers might tend to abandon their cart and move along.
Think about questions like:
- Is this size guide similar to other brands?
- Can I request this purchase to be gift-wrapped with a special message card?
- Can I pay extra and get this delivered overnight?
You cannot possibly provide answers to such questions on your site.
What you should do: Truth be told, you cannot update your site with answers to every question. This is when you need to be proactive and bring conversational commerce to your site.
This is what we mean.
Turn your live chatbot into a Q&A window. Train it with common scenarios and let it answer queries that demand simple answers, 24/7.
Let yourself or your support team monitor each shopper on the site in real-time.
When you can see shoppers on the checkout page idling about, you can immediately engage with that shopper via live chat and turn that prospect into a sale.
8 – Autochat window
Apps to solve this problem
Autochat is a well-rounded proactive shopper support app. This app is primarily created to give you power to influence shoppers while they are on your site, and so much more. Learn more about Autochat here.
Reason #10 Inability to calculate total costs upfront
Did you know that 25% of shoppers abandon a cart because the item or the total cost is too much?*
Two main culprits to jeopardize transparent pricing are taxes and shipping costs. Shoppers usually find out about these costs on the checkout page.
Nobody wants to see one price on the product page and another on the checkout page.
What you should do: if you are transparent by offering price break-up on your product pages, then you are good to go. If not, you really need to fix this.
Apps to solve this problem
- Here’s a Bigcommerce app to help your shoppers easily understand your pricing
- Here’s a Shopify app to help manage custom pricing
*NOTE: Statistics shown in this section were derived from the ReadyCloud report, that can be found here.
What else can you do to fix cart abandonment issues?
With cart abandonment, prevention is better than cure.
What does this mean?
What we mean is that it is far better to analyze, spot, and fix issues that lead to cart abandonment.
As mentioned in Reason #9, proactive customer support will go a long way to give you the power to preempt cart abandonment scenarios and influence shoppers in real-time to convert prospects into sales.
Additionally, you can carry out marketing activities to bring back shoppers who have abandoned their carts. Here are some of the things you can do:
Implement automation to trigger communication to shoppers who abandon their carts. From emails, SMS, WhatsApp, to Facebook messages, put down a process to automate such communication.
9 – Autochat home page
At the end of the day, purchasing is a people-to-people transaction. Even, when purchases are made online. The sooner you personalize and humanize purchasing experiences on your site using proactive (real-time shopper insight) and conversational (Live chat) shopping strategies, the sooner you will plug cart abandonment issues for good. You can solve these issues in a jiffy with Autochat. Learn more about Autochat here.
Final thoughts
Putting an end to cart abandonment issues is just one step to turn your business into a constant success. There are so many other challenges that need creative solutions.
This is why we founded Autochat. Our passion at autochat.io is to empower entrepreneurs in the ecommerce domain. Like you.
This has led us to create a repository of actionable content to help you make informed decisions and remove friction in:
- achieving tremendous scale in your business
- and scale your customer service speed, accuracy, and quality
Do bookmark our blog and subscribe to our newsletter for well researched, informative, and actionable content each week.
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