You work hard to get people to your site, they start shopping, and – bam – they’re gone without completing their sale. It’s frustrating, but not uncommon.
The median abandonment rate is 40% for products and 58% for services, according to research firm MarketingSherpa. During a slow economy such as now, shopping cart abandonment can go even higher. The average cost of abandoned goods in those shopping carts: $109.
Reasons for cart abandonment include:
High shipping charges: 46%
Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
Lack of money: 36%
Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
Wanted to shop offline: 26%
Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24%
Item unavailable at checkout: 23%
Couldn’t find customer support: 22%
Security concerns: 21%
But there is hope.
These shoppers, because they are one step away from giving you money, are often the potential customers who are the easiest to convert into real ones.
Ways to help convert abandoned shopping carts into sales:
Measure and analyze cart abandonment on your site
Reducing your rate of shopping cart abandonment starts with tracking it. Start by setting up an analytics program like Google Analytics (it’s free) to track which pages on your site cause people to leave.
One Google Analytics expert suggests breaking abandonment tracking into two metrics: cart abandonment (the percentage of people who put something in their carts but leave before checkout) and checkout abandonment (the percentage of people who begin checking out, but leave before paying.)
Simplify your checkout process
Dump any sections that are not essential to the sale, like requiring your customers to create an account or give you their cellphone number. When you do request personal information such as their e-mail address, explain why you want it and what you are going to do with it (fear of spam can kill a sale)
Make design revisions to your site
Sometimes even small tweaks can pay off big. One common recommendation: display the shopping cart and its items on every page.
One of the biggest reasons for abandoning carts is high shipping costs. To fix this, try offering free shipping – but if you can’t, at least design your product page so customers can calculate their shipping costs before they put items in their carts.
Another issue – your shoppers have questions about your products or services. There’s not enough info in the FAQ or your list of Features and Benefits. There is no one to talk to – no communications interface, no customer support phone number, and the customer service e-mail contact is many clicks back in the About Us section. So without answers, they bail. You need to revise your website to address these oversights.
A low-quality shopping cart or poorly designed catalog interface can kill sales, even if your homepage looks professional. Many of the widely available free shopping carts do not have the option to be customized to your site’s design specs or do not provide product attribute options such as color or size.
Make your customers feel safe about sharing their payment information.
A survey by VeriSign and Synovate Business Consulting revealed that customers consider security even more important than a low price when purchasing online.
85% of consumers say trusting the site is most important. Just 9% said competitive pricing was most important and 5% said ease of use was most important. Additionally, 93% of respondents said they would stop doing transactions on a site that is not secure.
Do you have an unsecured, non-SSL order page? No https, no encryption, no security, no real-time authorization? This translates into no concern for the safety of your shoppers’ personal data. Address these issues immediately.
It’s important to test any changes you make to your site.
Do an A/B test to see what works best (send customers randomly to either the new page or the old page). Test one change at a time. If you make several changes, how will you know which change caused the change to your abandonment rate. So test one change at a time. Track and analyze results. Then repeat with the next change you want to test.
Consider purchase incentives vs. online coupons
Purchase Incentives add value to customer carts in the form of free gift certificates or movie tickets for completing a purchase. A message on your checkout page would say something like “Free $20 gift certificate when you complete your purchase.” This may just be the little push your customers need to complete that sale.
Online coupons can be effective if the customer has a coupon code, but can be a distraction to online customers who do not. A full 27% of shoppers abandon their carts to go look for that coupon.
Companies like TrialPay offer purchase incentives to entice your customers to complete their transactions or add more to their carts by offering free movie tickets, gift cards and more—at little or no cost to you.
Send follow-up emails to customers who abandoned their carts
If a customer has already created an account, it’s possible to follow up with an e-mail. There are companies that can handle this for you if you can’t or don’t want to handle it yourself. The e-mails ask your customers if they had technical difficulties and then offers a discount if they complete their purchases.
Wait at least ten minutes before you send this e-mail so it doesn’t come across as cyberstalking. Also include an unsubscribe link at the top of the message.
SeeWhy, an analytics provider in Massachusetts, offers a free service that provides e-mail addresses of customers who abandon their carts.
Follow your abandoners to other sites they visit – and show them your ads
Several companies offer this behavioral targeting service, including AudienceScience, which can place your ad on more than 10,000 sites.
Behavioral targeting has come under scrutiny from privacy advocates and lawmakers, so you should be cautious about getting too personal with these follow-up ads.
There you go. Try these tips and track your results – see if you can’t convert more abandoned carts into sales.
credits:
inc. magazine
ecommerce-guide.com
emarketer.com
trialpay.com
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