Just when you’re about to close a sale, something unexpected happens! The buyer disappears, leaving the shopping cart unattended. This is not news as 72% of merchants agree that shopping cart abandonment is a real problem. The good news is that there is a way that shop owners can reverse this habit and grab more sales.
Contact your Visitors
Studies show that not everybody shops to buy. Others are just window shopping to see the items available at the store. This means that such visitors are not yet ready to buy, but chances are they might come back when they’re ready. They also have high chances of going to a different merchant when they are finally ready to purchase the product they saw at your shop.
The best way to prevent such people from slipping away is to keep in touch. They probably left their email when registering. Sending automated emails to follow up can help bring the customer back when they are ready to make a purchase.
Simplify Checkout
Customers lack the patience to wait, and will easily switch to the next merchant if your checkout process takes a lot of time. While you might need a lot of details at the checkout, you should try as much as possible to make it simple and quick. Sellers that make a lot of sales don’t have more than five checkout steps. You can also shorten the checkout length so that you don’t bore your buyers to the point of abandoning their carts.
Offer Free Shipping
Shipping costs is another main reason for shopping cart abandonment. Free shipping can be a great strategy to combat this behavior. You need to do this wisely so that it doesn’t end up becoming too expensive for you. A good strategy is to use free shipping to attract new shoppers.
Offer free shipping to anyone shopping with you for the first time and entice them into coming back the next time they want to buy something.
Support Different Payment Methods
Shoppers can abandon a cart at the payment stage because the website didn’t support their payment method. If you want to succeed in e-commerce, you must come up with multiple payment methods so that you don’t lock out some of your customers. This strategy is especially important if you’re targeting international customers.
The best payment methods that incorporate everyone are the e-wallets, which include PayPal, Neteller, Pay with Amazon, Masterpass, among others. Also, ensure your website accepts credit card payments, and there are no delays during the payment processing.
Make All the Costs Transparent
According to studies, three out of five shoppers abandon their carts because they meet some additional costs at the checkout stage. While some customers can afford to pay for the additional costs, most customers don’t like such surprises.
Customers expect to pay the same price on the page when checking out. Unfortunately, some merchants slap them with additional fees such as taxes, shipping costs, and other extra charges. They will immediately feel cheated and abandon their cart without thinking twice.
There is no single factor that causes shopping cart abandonment. Sellers must look at it from different angles and tackle each uniquely. The best thing to do is look at it from the customers’ point of view and think about how you would like it if you were the shopper.
