Before They Say Goodbye: How to Keep Online Shoppers From Abandoning Carts

‘Tis the season for retail – instore or online! Indeed, the holiday season mean a flurry of shopping activities. Sadly, it also means an increase in abandoned online shopping carts. This happens when a potential shopper visits your online store, places items into their shopping cart and leaves before checking out the items. This can mean the shopper is doing some comparison shopping, looking up his credit card details or simply, stopping short of the most important (at least for the online retailers) activity in the process – completing the purchase.

Online retailers will do well to think up and implement strategies to reduce the percentage of abandoned carts in their online store. This will lead to higher revenue and forge a stronger relationship with the shopper.

There are two major steps you can make to decrease cart abandonment rates – prevent it before it happens and encourage buyers to go back to the cart after they have abandoned it. Here are some ways you can do these:

–          Inspire confidence on the product. Sometimes, buyers are still undecided about the product. This may be because they feel they have inadequate information about specifications, sizes or colors. It may also be that they think they can get a cheaper product somewhere else. You can reinforce their confidence on your products by:

• Giving them access to more information. These also need to be designed in such a way that the information is not also too overwhelming. You can also add more images of the product, not just on the product page, but also thumbnails on the cart page. When adding the information, provide it through a new window that is also bandwidth friendly for quick loading.
• Highlighting happy customers. If there are reviews or testimonials, show them.
• Offering a price guarantee or a return guarantee.
• Being transparent. Inform them about delivery costs and shipping times.

–          Inspire confident in the website. The need to provide personal and credit card information may cause some shoppers to balk, fearing that these information can be misused. Display security badges and compliance information on the site to show shoppers that you can be trusted with their information. You can also add contact details such as your email address and phone numbers. Thoroughly test your processes to ensure there are no bugs and security issues.

–          Simplify the purchasing and checkout process. Do not make the buyer jump through hoops just to complete the purchase. Rather, make it as simple as possible.

• Allow them to easily edit the items in their cart so that they do not have to go back to the original product page.
• Ask for the least amount of information, only what is necessary to complete the purchase. (The shopping cart is not where you can make customer surveys about gender, income, etc.).
• Provide them with alternative payment methods.
• Help them with questions. Provide online chat functionality and/or a number they can call. And have someone available to answer queries either by chat or call.
• Get rid of distractions. Do not put links to other articles, pop-up cross-sell offers, banner ads while they are on the purchasing and checkout process. They may be enticed to go check out an article or offer and decide not to come back for their cart.

–          Sweeten up the finish line. Some ways to do this include offering free shipping if the purchase reaches a certain threshold amount. You can also offer a gift or discount coupon to be used for their next purchase. Also, do not think to insert hidden costs during the check-out. Some tricks include selling items at low costs and then charging very high shipping fees. Not only is this an immediate turn-off for buyers, it can also plant doubts about other unpleasant surprises they may experience with your store.

–          Call them back. When they have abandoned the cart, you can send e-mail reminders about their cart.

About Adaptivity Pro

Let Adaptivity Pro help you with shopping cart and other Utah web design issues. Adaptivity Pro is a company that specializes not just in web design but also in SLC SEO, e-commerce and other internet-based services. The company is made up of a team of seasoned and creative programmers, writers, designers and SEO specialists.