Thursday, June 4, 2015

10 Reasons Why Consumers Abandon Online Shopping Carts — And How to Fix Them

June 04, 2015 at 01:00PM

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This post originally appeared on HubSpot's Agency Post. To read more content like this, subscribe to Agency Post.

A study by Baymard Institute found that 68.5% of consumers abandon their online shopping carts.

That equals a lot of lost revenue for brands. 

The more concerning issue is that many online sellers don't understand why people abandon their shopping carts.Without this, brands can't implement a fix. 

To get you started on your path to discovering why people are leaving their shopping carts, consider these 10 ideas:

1) You aren’t utilizing a preemptive system.

Without a systemized method for tracking campaigns, it’s difficult to know what you are doing wrong. Before even turning on your campaigns, discover exactly how much you are losing and your actual recovery potential through a checkout diagnostic tool. Create weekly assessment reports that help you identify the leakages in your checkout and provide insight around your checkout process before you even turn your campaigns live. This way, you can minimize losing out on ROI.

2) You aren’t capturing emails.

When you don’t capture consumer emails, you lose out on the critical ability to remarket to visitors and keep leads in your sales funnel. To optimize email captures, use popups to prompt shoppers to enter an email address or create a membership-only site that requires login credentials. These methods will allow you to track shopping carts and email users when their carts have been idle for a set period of time. The result is that you can market directly to your consumer with gentle reminders such as changes in price or stock quantity.

3) You aren't leveraging incentives.

To capture unsure consumers, you should use incentives to keep them coming back. While a reminder email is a good place to start to let users know they have items left in their shopping cart, sometimes they need additional incentive to make their purchase. Implement creative email sequences that will give your shoppers extra incentives, such providing a discount code or highlighting a promotion or offer that will prompt them to make their purchase.

4) You aren’t optimizing checkout.

If your checkout process is too complicated or appears insecure, your users are more likely to abandon their purchase all together. Strive to build an efficient checkout procedure that guides consumers seamlessly through their purchasing process. Ideally it will be intuitive, easy to use, and require as little information on their end as possible while also giving you the data you need for future marketing.

5) You’ve limited the payment methods.

While it can be more costly to integrate various methods of accepted payments, it can pay off to offer a wide variety of accepted payment methods. Consumers might become disappointed when they find out you have a selective payment process and are likely to abandon their cart if unable to pay with their preferred method. Integrate as many payment options into your site as possible to be accessible for all.

6) Your shipping cost is too high.

An unexpectedly high shipping cost can deter consumers from making a purchase. To avoid catching your shopper off guard, create a quick shipping calculator along with added tax on the view cart page so consumers are aware of the total price per purchase. You can also utilize this space for a promotional message on the view cart page such as,  "Free Shipping on Orders Over $__.” This provides an incentive for the consumer while enabling you to capture more sales and increase revenue.

7) Your checkout process is too lengthy.

A long checkout process through various pages will dissuade users from completing their purchases. Consider the user interface of your checkout flow and whether a single-page version is more efficient than clicking through pages. You can also include numbered steps to your checkout process on a sidebar so that consumers know what steps are coming next and how close they are to completion. In addition, you can provide users with the option to save their payment and shipping information to make their checkout easier the next time around.

8) Your prices aren’t competitive.

It’s possible that an abandoned shopping cart means the consumer found a better deal elsewhere. Make sure that your product pricing is in line with industry standards, and track your competitors sales and promotional offers. Distinguish yourself from competitors by educating your consumers into making educated buying decisions.

9) Your user experiences technical difficulties with their shopping cart.

Consumers get frustrated when their items don't save to their cart or the quantity is wrong. Make sure that your site is functioning at an optimal level to account for varying traffic levels and user interactions.

10) You don’t understand WHY your consumers abandon their cart.

If you don’t recognize the contributing factors to your cart abandonment issues, it makes it very difficult to implement a solution.You need to understand the motivations behind abandonment. Start a survey, ask for feedback, or perform user testing. Get to the bottom of why you are losing out on revenue and new relationships with online shoppers. 

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