October 2021 | Kitpak Fulfillment

Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

You have worked hard to develop your business and have created a great website and shopping cart for your customers to purchase your products online. While your online sales may be good, you may notice a growing number of shoppers leaving your website before completing their purchase. In fact, an average of 64% of online shoppers who initiate an online purchase will abandon their shopping cart before completing the purchase process. Why does this happen?

To prevent cart abandonment, the best thing an online store owner can do is to facilitate a smooth, quick and easy checkout process for their customer. Anything that interrupts the check-out process creates an opportunity for the shopper to reconsider their purchase and potentially change their mind.

Why shoppers will abandon a shopping cart.

Higher than expected shipping charges

The top reason for cart abandonment is the customer finding higher than expected shipping/handling charges after starting the purchase process. They will stop to reconsider the value and potentially stop the purchase.

What can you do to prevent this? There are many strategies that can be adopted, depending on your particular product, profit margins, ship-to locations, speed to market requirements, etc.

Provide clear details up front on the typical extra costs such as shipping and handling.

Offer free shipping. This is obviously a great benefit for the customer but it can also help you increase sales. For example, you could offer free shipping only if an order meets a certain value, creating an incentive for the customer to increase the size of the order.

Offer flat rate shipping. Flat rate shipping allows you to be transparent about the cost of shipping so your customer is not surprised by the cost at checkout. Online shoppers will like this.

The check out process is too complicated.

Sometimes, before completing an online purchase, the customer is asked to create an account or to provide their full contact information. Asking for too much information up front can stop a customer from completing their purchase. What can you do to help facilitate a smooth purchase?

Make the entire purchasing process as simple as possible.

Avoid forcing the customer to provide too much information prior to completing the purchase transaction. There is time to do this after the purchase.

Avoid complicated payment processes and utilize a guest checkout for those not wanting to create an account.

The online shopper was simply browsing

Not all online shoppers are visiting your store to make a purchase, many are simply browsing for products or services in which they are interested but are not ready to complete a purchase. They may be researching products, comparing pricing, checking to see if it is in stock, etc. So what can you do to help facilitate an eventual purchase?

Implementing a cart recovery process can allow you to get back in touch with the potential customer. This is a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors who do not follow-up

Offer an incentive to return and complete a purchase

Try to stay top of mind by utilizing tracking pixels to redisplay the browsed products at appropriate times.

Kitpak Fulfillment is a Winnipeg based e-fulfillment partner to Canadian online store owners. To learn more about how Kitpak can help improve your e-fulfillment services while saving you money, reach out to us today. We are ready to help!

Shipping

Today, many online businesses struggle when it comes to charging for shipping. It is common for online shoppers to abandon a shopping cart if they encounter higher than expected shipping charges. There are many methods of charging for shipping and handling of an online order and you want to get it right.

How shipping charges are presented to the customer is also very important in helping complete an online sale.

Calculated Shipping Charges

This is one of the most common methods of applying shipping charges. A customer who has added items to a cart will be required to enter their delivery address prior to checkout in order for the system to calculate the shipping charges to the delivery destination. While calculated shipping may appear to be fair, there are some concerns that this method can lead to higher cart abandonment than other methods.
When an online shopper is required to fill in numerous additional form fields prior to their finalizing the purchase, they may choose to not bother and leave. If they complete the necessary form fields and the shipping charges are presented, the customer will do a quick evaluation of the charges and if perceived to be excessive, again, they may leave before completing the purchase. Studies show that up to 30% of abandoned carts are due to the customer finding higher than expected shipping charges.

Another problem with calculated shipping is that it favours local customers who are close by and penalizes customers who may be a greater distance from the shipping point. Is it the customer’s fault that the shipping point is not in their local community?

Threshold Shipping

Threshold shipping is where the online shopper is given the opportunity to reduce or eliminate their shipping costs by increasing the value (threshold) of their order. This is a leading method of increasing sales as many shoppers will choose to increase their order to secure free shipping, however the value must be within reason. It is unlikely that a shopper will increase their order size to save a minimal amount in shipping. Make it worth their while.

Threshold shipping offers store owners a great opportunity to increase sales. On the downside, the shipping calculation is usually required if the threshold is not met. This again can lead to cart abandonment.

Flat Rate Shipping

Flat rate shipping is a very simple method of applying shipping charges to your online orders. This method eliminates the need to collect extra information from your online customer prior to their completing a purchase. Flat rate shipping attempts to generate full recovery of shipping costs based on observed averages.

Here is an example of how basic flat rate shipping charges can be calculated. First, total the shipping expenses for a set period of time, typically annually. Next, add up the total number of orders (shipments) made in the same period. Determine the average cost by dividing the total expenses by the total number of shipments. Next, add an allowance for shipping cost variance or an order handling charge, if applicable.

Example

Annual Shipping Expense: $9,000
Annual Orders/Shipments: 1,200
Average Shipping Cost per Order: $ 7.50
Handling Charge: $ 2.00
Target Flat Rate Shipping Charge: $ 9.50

One significant benefit of Flat Rate shipping is that since you know the rate, it can be presented to the customer up front, avoiding any potential unpleasant surprizes for your customer during the check out process.

Free Shipping

Offering free shipping for online orders is an extremely popular strategy that is gaining greater momentum in the world of e-commerce. Free shipping does not mean an online store loses revenue; it simply means that the online shopper is not presented with a separate shipping charge for their order. In reality, average shipping costs are built into the price of the product so the customer never has to contend with unexpected shipping costs and therefore does not have the opportunity to re-evaluate and possibly cancel the purchase prior to completion.

Online shoppers love the offer of free shipping and this leads to increased sales and the lowest abandoned shopping cart rates.

To learn more about how Kitpak Fulfillment can help improve your e-fulfillment process, contact us today. We will be happy to answer your questions and provide information on how we can help you save money.

Monthly Archives: October 2021