11 Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Have you ever wondered why you pay loads of money on leading more customers to your site but still have any results? 

If the answer is yes, then the problem might come from somewhere in your own e-store, and you haven’t known about it.

Have a look at this statistic: 56.82% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts at checkout. (according to Fresh Relevance). Just think about it as this can be the reason you lost your customers. 

This post will look at the top reasons why customers choose to abandon their shopping carts. Then, take you through some of the best practices to address these problems for Magento 2 stores. 

Why is your cart abandonment rate high?

For those who don’t know, shopping cart abandonment is when a prospect on your e-store has added at least one item to their cart, then decides to no longer purchase. 

Merchants are able to track and measure this figure based on the percentage of carts abandoned over a while. There are many factors that lead to a high cart abandonment rate, like lousy UI, slow checkout flow, or even negative feedback on product pages, etc.

Back to the main question: What are the reasons for the high cart abandonment rate?

There are several reasons for this shopping behavior; the most common ones will be:

• The shipping fee is too expensive accounts for 63% (Statista)
• 34% of shoppers abandon their carts as they don’t want to make an account to checkout (Baymard Institute)
• 26% of online buyers quit their carts because of the complicated checkout process (Baymard Institute)
• 17% of buyers don’t want to checkout for their items because of untrustworthy credit card information (Baymard Institute)

Other reasons that have a significant impact on cart abandonment rate could list:

• Slow loading speed
• Return difficulties
• Lack of payment options

Once you identify where your store’s problem comes from, it’s just a matter of time for you to find out the right solutions that could reduce cart abandonment rates. 

Below are the collection of 11 proven useful tips to minimize the Magento 2 cart abandonment rate for your business. 

11 ways to combat shopping cart abandonment

Use the one-step checkout process 

Put yourself in the shoes of a shopper. Do you want to face a multi-step checkout process while purchasing online?

A short process can contribute significantly to the customer buying experience as well as the last determinant in customers purchasing decisions. In this case, one step checkout process is precisely your need. 

A few ideas to optimize your one-step process:

• Don’t make your checkout form in the process consist of too many fields
• The checkout form should be viewed above the fold on the desktop and doesn’t require much scrolling on mobile devices

Royalmen is a great illustration for no friction one step checkout process.

Include product thumbnail images in the checkout page

The biggest difference between eCommerce and brick-and-mortar stores are: 

• With an actual store, buyers can touch any item and see them in front of their eyes. This somewhat makes customers less likely to change their mind once they take the thing on hands to the checkout counter               
• With online shopping, customers can lose interest in a product quite fast as they have more time to consider purchasing. Plus, the time from items are added to the cart to the checkout step involves lots of distraction leading to cart abandonment 

With product thumbnails on the checkout page, merchants can reduce the possibility of distraction, plus remind shoppers of their desired products right on the shopping cart, just like how Online Spy Shop does on their site.

Simplify navigation between cart and store

It’s really easy for online buyers to lose focus when they shop and wander on your site to search for their wanted products. This tip works based on the same mechanism of the one-step checkout simplification. 

25% of shoppers abandoned their carts due to the overly complicated navigation. The more comfortable you make it for visitors to move between the cart and your store, the more likely they will stick with it and check out.

Look at how Timberland uses 2 clickable buttons so that customers can choose between checking carts and proceeding to checkout.  

Simple navigation makes your visitors easier to shop; hence, higher customers’ satisfaction. The higher user experience customers have, the more conversions your site gets.  

Provide multiple payment options

The proliferation of eCommerce websites has been the main reason for expanding payment methods in order to please the online customers’ demand. 

Modern shoppers have so many choices when it comes to online payment. To reduce the cart abandonment rate, you need to eliminate all the potential reasons to prevent customers from finishing their checkout process. 

And offering multiple payment options is one of the first things you should try. Most importantly, you should provide visitors with numerous payment options from credit card, Paypal, Google Wallet – any form of payment you know is common within your niche. 

Use cart abandonment email 

In this post, you will find great advice on how to convince customers to finish their checkout process. However, this next tip is worth doubling-down on as it focuses on reminding customers of their forgotten items in the carts. 

What you should write in your cart abandonment email:

• Remind them one item they left in the cart and shine the spotlight on it
• Use a call-to-action button with a strong incentive to entice customers to come back to your website and finish the process 
• Try to design your email short, sweet, and to the point

If it doesn’t work, consider using a follow-up email strategy to keep up with the customers and create chances to retain them in the future.

A series of emails is 63% more effective than a single email for any email strategy. One of the best tools you can use to do retargeting strategy via email in Magento 2 is Follow Up Email module or an Abandoned Cart Email Extension

The effectiveness of email as a sales recovery tactic is remarkable. However, to get out the most of your cart abandoned email series, this is how your cart abandonment should start:

• Send the first email to remind visitor about their forgotten cart 30 minutes after it is abandoned  
• If the first one doesn’t work, the second email should go within 24 hours of the abandonment to warn customers about cart expiration
• The last email needs to be sent within 48 hours to offer visitors a special discount for their desired items in the cart 

A powerful technology assistant helps you make a chain of email automatically sent to customers based on their activities, including abandonment emails, trigger emails, etc. 

Have a better product visual

When shopping online, apart from previous customers’ reviews, visitors can only assess a product via its images provided by the store. Basically, they don’t have any physical contact with the product itself.

It is also a determinant factor that can make customers less likely to make a purchase. These are some tips you could pick that bring a better visual experience for your customers:

• Only display high-resolution and clear images for all products 
• Use videos on product pages to support the value proposition of your product
• Instead of using only one image for each product, add multiple product photos with different perspectives of the product
• If possible, use images that showcase a personalized experience like how it will benefit the customer 
• Allow customers to zoom into images or even view the product in different colors

Inspire trust with social proof 

First’s thing first! Social proof represents a psychological phenomenon of people following the actions of the masses. In another way, when customers are on the fence about spending money on an item, they tend to worry about remorse. 

Most importantly, they want to get their money’s worth. In this case, social proof alleviates that concern by providing hesitant customers with other customers’ thoughts about that product or services. 

Below are some ways you could do to take advantage of social proof on your site:

• Send a follow-up email to your previous customers to ask them a product feedback
• Display reviews on every product pages as well as list testimonials on other landing pages 
• Use social proof notifications on your site that lets your visitors know when someone has positively engaged with the brand. (For example, notifications with messages: “Someone added to the cart” or “Someone signed up for a newsletter, etc.)

Consider using free shipping

Another useful tactic you can use to prevent customers from abandoning their cart is a free shipping offer. Everyone likes a bargain!

That’s why most customers shop around for a better deal, especially the shipping fee. They hate it so much that the shipping fee is proven to be the biggest reason (accounted for 63%) for shopping cart abandonment. 

Some advice for you in terms of shipping:

• Consider free shipping on standard delivery. Still, you add extra fees for premium services like expedited shipping
• Choose carriers with low cost and offer free shipping if customers pick these carriers
• Offer free or discounted shipping based on the customers’ order value (For example, free shipping for the high-value item and discount shipping for lower-value orders)
• Charge the cost of shipping into the product list price. However this can potentially make your price higher than competitors’

Though free shipping is a great incentive to boost sales, this tactic has a significant impact on the bottom line, as well as your pricing strategy. Be conscious when applying this sales tactic.

Create a sense of urgency 

Creating a sense of urgency is not a new sales tactic in marketing. However, it’s still a very effective way of stopping customers’ hesitation in purchase decisions.  

The truth is that when you give your potential customers time to think, they tend to delay making purchases. A discounted code or the store’s promotional offer is about to expire will be an incentive for the customers to quickly checkout. 

However, you should be careful when creating a sense of urgency without stressing out or annoying the buyers. This is how you do it:

• Set a clear deadline for all your discounts. For example, Amazon uses a real-time countdown below the deals to show customers how many time left they have to get the discounted price for their desired items
• Put a limit on the number of products that are up for sale to create a sense of scarcity 
• Display promotional offers (free shipping time-limited or 50% sales) that go with sales deadline on the homepage
• Send email to the customers who have products on their carts without purchasing to announce them about the promotions for these abandoned items   
• Use a constant floating bar to promote your main offer
• Highlight the number of products left for each one 

Amazon uses a countdown timer for each of their special deals.

Provide customers a clear return policy 

According to Invesco, 67% of online shoppers check the store’s return page before purchasing. The buyer’s remorse doesn’t only happen before the checkout process but also on the post-purchase. 

When it comes to purchasing online, there are several reasons with customers’ orders that make them unsatisfied, such as wrong products or parcel damage while delivering. Nothing ensures that the products your customers buy are perfectly fine and meet their expectations.

That can explain why online shoppers put so much attention to return policies of an e-store before making a purchase. 

Just give your customers an easy understanding return policy as an insurance for their parcel, hence increase trust for your shop.

No hidden cost

Trying to hide the cost from the customers is always a bad idea. Especially shoppers finding out about your hidden or extra charges at the end of checkout is a common reason for abandonment. 

Taxes and shipping fees are 2 primary roots for unexpected costs that push the total payment higher than what customers want. The easiest solution is to be crystal clear about all costs upfront to the customer from the start. 

Wrap up!

There is no such thing as a 0% cart abandonment rate as shoppers will still abandon no matter how well-designed or seamless checkout you have. 

However, these above tips are definitely worth giving a try to reduce cart abandonment both on and off your site. 

Start creating for yourself a cart abandonment strategy to test different tactics and find out what works best for your buyers.