How to decrease cart abandonment rate

This month we’ve been focusing on how cart abandonment is a huge problem for ecommerce businesses. One study found that more than 70% of customers will abandon their carts before checkout.

That's why it's so important to reduce your cart abandonment rate. In this post, we'll show you how to identify the reasons for cart abandonment and then give you actionable strategies you can implement to decrease cart abandonment.

Why do customers abandon their shopping carts?

You must first know why your shoppers are abandoning their carts In order to decrease cart abandonments. There are a few reasons why people abandon their carts. Here are some of the most common ones:

They were ready to buy but you made it too hard for them to give you their money. This could be a clunky checkout experience, forcing them to sign up for a store account before they could buy or just a slow, buggy site.
They may not fully trust you, yet. Most people are fully comfortable with putting their credit card information online nowadays but they may not trust your products or brands are worth it.
They weren’t really going to buy. Some people like to use online shopping as an aspirational wishlist. Maybe they’ll buy down the road when they have some more money or maybe they weren’t ever going to buy.
They were really going to buy but got distracted. Your shopper may have come in from a great affiliate marketing message and added a product to a cart and then … life happens. They may have been jazzed up to buy your product but then they got a phone call or their kid yelled at them or they knocked their drink over and forgot about buying once they cleaned up the mess. In an online environment, t’s very easy to not complete your purchase and to completely forget about it.

How to decrease cart abandonment

Here are some proven ways you can decrease your cart abandonments. Best of all, all of these are things you can implement quickly to start making a difference on your top and bottom lines.

Use email marketing to turn those abandoned carts into buyers

Just because someone abandoned a cart doesn’t mean you’ve lost the sale. You can recover that sale with the use of email marketing. We’ve put together a list of 13 stellar abandoned cart email marketing campaigns you should try.

These are great campaigns you should run to better nudge your known customers to complete their purchases. But, what about those shoppers who abandon their carts and you don’t know their email addresses?

Thanks to tools like SafeOpt, you can now recover 3-5X more shoppers who abandoned their carts — all in a compliant and cost-effective way.

Once you install the SafeOpt javascript on your site, it allows you to reach the previously-unreachable shoppers with qualified email offers that help nudge them to the purchase finish line. These emails are all compliant with email and privacy regulations and can really move the needle for a business.

One leading online health brand has used SafeOpt to generate an additional $2.7 million in revenue in just one year — most of that revenue would likely have been lost to abandoned carts without SafeOpt. It also works on a cost-per-acquisition basis, so you’re only paying if it’s generating results for you.

Optimize the Shopping Experience

Buying something in a physical store is relatively easy: you walk up to the checkout and give them cash or a card. There might be an occasional snag if the system is down or if someone is still writing a check, but overall it’s a very smooth process.

That’s not always the case when you’re buying online.

Sometimes, buying online can be a chore. You have to get to the right page, you might have to fill out multiple forms, you might have to go to the other room to get your credit card, and you may have to wade through multiple forms and signup fields before you can hit that final “buy” button.

If you want to decrease your abandoned carts, make your shopping experience great. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Make your checkout process as simple as possible. People don't want to spend time filling out forms, especially when they're already invested in the buying process. They just want to get through checkout quickly so they can get on with their lives.

Use social proof throughout your site so shoppers feel reassured about making a purchase from your company. Social proof can be anything from testimonials to reviews or ratings from third-party websites.
Offer multiple payment options. If your shopper doesn’t have their credit card handy, don’t make them get up to get it. Instead, offer alternative payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay or others. You may also want to consider offering Buy Now, Pay Later options like Affirm or Klarna if you sell expensive items.

Offer incentives to reduce abandoned carts

Some of your abandoned-cart shoppers are on the fence about buying. An extra little incentive is a proven way to get them to complete the purchase.

Do not underestimate the power of free shipping. One survey said nearly half of all online shoppers would avoid online retailers who didn’t offer free shipping. Not everybody has the deep pockets of Amazon to do free shipping but there are ways you can potentially offer this to cut down on cart abandonment rates:

Be upfront about shipping costs. Shoppers are more likely to abandon their carts if they’re hit with a large and unexpected shipping fee at the last stage of the checkout process. Notify customers about shipping costs earlier to avoid that “sticker shock.”
Offer free shipping at cart thresholds. Do the math to determine at what cart price it makes sense to offer free shipping. This tends to improve the average order volume for retailers as many customers would rather spend more overall on items they like versus having to pay for shipping.
See how you can offer free shipping. Maybe you bake the shipping costs into the overall price of your products. Maybe you offer free shipping that’s somewhat slower than the two-day standard that Amazon delivers. There are many benefits to offering free shipping to customers but you must first make sure it makes sense for your financial models.

Fewer abandoned carts means more revenue

Abandoned carts are the bane of the ecommerce world. But, if you use the tips in this article like optimizing your shopping experience, offering incentives and using great tools like SafeOpt, you’re bound to see abandoned carts become a thing of the past.

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