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!

Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment