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What Is Shopping Cart Abandonment in Ecommerce?

5 min to read

Shopping cart abandonment involves a user adding an item to their cart and leaving the web without completing their purchase; it is salvageable if you know how to appeal to the customer.

Reasons why this happens can include VAT and shipping costs; in some cases, the customer will buy at a later point.

Checkout processes and factors surrounding your website can also play a role, as can item stocks.

Key Takeaways:
  • Solutions
    • Consider the role of brand trust and streamline your checkout process. Leverage recovery tools and marketing software to minimize shopping cart abandonment.
  • Try to avoid shopping cart abandonment
    • Since shopping cart abandonment leads to lost revenue, it's a good idea to be proactive in engaging customers.
  • Root causes
    • Focus on what can influence shopping cart abandonment, such as website usability.
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What Is Shopping Cart Abandonment in Ecommerce?

What is the main cause of shopping cart abandonment?

You can mitigate shopping cart abandonment by being transparent about fees such as shipping, taxes, and card payments. These are usually the primary contributors, and it’s worth telling customers up front so they know what to expect.

It’s also important to look at your checkout processes and identify potential bottlenecks. Look at your loading times, get a secure socket layer (SSL) certificate, and optimize your user interface where needed.

Pro Tips:
• Transparency: You must be clear about fees, such as shipping prices to different destinations, to ensure that users complete their purchases. You can add these as a note on your items, in an FAQ section, or via your helpdesk.

• Checkout Process: Make checkout buttons, along with payment methods you accept, visible so that customers can move forward. Think about the user journey across your site; analyze this via heatmaps, breadcrumbs, and other analytics.

• Trust: Display customer reviews from your products; do this from sites like Trustpilot. Give clear instructions on refund and return policies and outline who they can contact. You should also have security badges for your site and payments.

What is shopping cart syndrome?

This is not an official term, but you will hear it used in eCommerce across several industries – especially fashion. It involves not planning to buy but filling a shopping cart with different items; sometimes, users are saving items for easy access later.

In other cases, this might happen because users had the sudden idea to purchase something. They might also be comparing prices across different websites before making a decision. It’s also possible that they wanted to look elsewhere and see what else was on offer on different websites. 

Pro Tips:
• Retarget: Use retargeting ads on different websites.

• Wish Lists: If customers aren’t ready to complete a purchase, let them create wish lists that they can later refer to. 

What is a good cart abandonment rate?

Average purchase completion rates are around 30%. However, you need to look at what the percentages are for your specific industry to define your benchmark; abandonment rates could vary. 

Once you know the average rate for your industry, set goals to be lower than that number and think about how to optimize your website accordingly. 

Pro Tips:
• Benchmarks: Know what rates are in your industry before setting goals for yourself. Be honest with your current level and focus on iteration over time. Experiment with different strategies to see what does and doesn’t work.

• Tracking: Use software to track how your shopping cart is doing. Look for areas that you can improve and gather feedback from your customers.

What are some common strategies to reduce shopping cart abandonment?

Some strategies you can use to lower shopping cart abandonment include: 

  • Changing the checkout process: Give guest checkout options and simplify the checkout phase to increase conversions and generate more revenue.

  • Cost transparency: Make sure that users know about shipping fees, VAT, etc. up front. 

  • Payment methods: Let users pay via debit card (VISA/MasterCard), digital wallets (e.g. PayPal/Skrill), pay later services (e.g. Klarna), and whatever else makes sense for your market. 

  • Website performance: Look at your website’s loading speeds and security certificates. 

  • Trust: You need to look for grammatical accuracy and also include customer reviews. Other things to consider are contact details, policies, and any certification that’s needed. Consider also including your company VAT number. 

  • Recovery emails: Automate emails that remind customers that they need to finalize their purchase.

What tools can help me reduce shopping cart abandonment?

Tools that you might want to consider looking at include:

  • Cart abandonment software: Use this software to send emails and look at customer behavior trends. Rejoiner and Meteorik are two examples. 

  • A/B testing tools: Split-test different page layouts and customer checkout journeys. AB Tasty and Optimizely are two such tools. 

  • Website analytics: Look at where users are visiting on your site, and where they’re coming from. Examples include Google Analytics and Semrush.

Conclusion 

You need to know what influences customer purchases and think about where to optimize. Understand these aspects by using software designed for it, and learn about the average rates in your industry. You should then think about how you can increase conversions and split-test these accordingly.

Consider other aspects, too, like making your website look trustworthy. It’s also essential to think about whether users intend to buy when they fill their carts, and how to retarget appropriately. 

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