Three Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

What happens 67.89% of the time a person hits your shopping cart? They leave without purchasing, that’s what!

Over two-thirds of your prospective sales simply pull the virtual equivalent of setting their purchase on the checkout desk and walking out. Why do so many decide on this flight from purchase?

Reasons given for shopping cart abandonment

In a study done by Statista, there are a number of reasons for this (we think) aberrant behavior. Here are just a few.

  • Surprise costs at checkout (think shipping)
  • They found a lower price somewhere else
  • They decided your it’s too pricy
  • Your form is interminable
  • They question your site security
  • You ask for way too much information

Creating barriers to purchase isn’t exactly what you’d hoped to accomplish when you set up your shopping cart, but here you are! Here’s three steps you can take that can help shrink your exit rates and pile more revenues into your account.

Make your pricing work for customers – According to OneUpWeb, 59 percent of customers expect to see the total cost, and this includes shipping, before they get to your checkout page. That leaves the ball in your court to disclose as much as possible. This also means thinking about your shipping costs. If you aren’t able to offer free shipping, think about reducing or eliminating these costs after a certain threshold.

Don’t make the process interminable – You’ve experienced this one yourself. The form goes on and on, requesting all manner of information, nearly all of it unrelated to the purchase. This is a major reason people bolt from your cart. If the info isn’t directly relevant to the purchase, don’t include it!

Mind your language – Test the words you use on your buttons and other calls to action. Make certain they are working for you. The common labels used, such as apply, go, proceed, buy now, continue or back, do these pertain to your particular product or action? Don’t be deceived into thinking that these are of little importance, as a few percentage point increase can be a quite substantial sum! Test!

Fairly often the last thing we think to optimize is our shopping carts. I propose that it needs to be a lot higher on your list of things to do!