Cart Abandonment: Meaning and a step-by-step guide

Cart abandonment rate is a very crucial metric to measure because a high abandonment rate can lead to a poor client experience or broken sales funnel. Decreasing cart abandonment drives legitimately to more deals and revenue, so improving the checkout flow should be a primary focus for online retailers.

What is cart abandonment?

At the point when a potential client begins the checkout process for online purchase and drops out of the procedure before finishing the purchase. Anything that enters the shopping cart however never goes through a transaction is known as “abandoned” by the customer.

98% of shoppers who visit your store won’t make a buy while the average mobile shopping cart abandonment rate is 81%.

It is a reality that the average online store loses over 75% of the sale to cart abandonment. Customer visits the online store, put a thing in their cart and exactly when they’re going to finish the purchase – they drop out.

Lots of sales result in a loss in the form of abandoned carts. Here, I have listed down some of the widely known causes for shopping cart abandonment and the ways to recover the same.

Why online users abandon?

Fair enough to say, people look at their own conveniences while shopping online.

There will be a group of people who would like to simply add items to their wish list and then leave the cart without checking out. Also, there will be a group of people, who would not like to check out reasoning to price comparison, difficult checkout process, lack of coupons, unfriendly user interface, etc.

Something to be accepted here is the fact that – it’s going to happen! Cart abandonments are going to happen. There are certain causes that are simply unavoidable. But there are certain ways that can definitely help combat those causes and or can at least help in reducing cart abandonment due to such reasons.   

For example, adding items to the wish list. People would like to simply surf through the website and add items to the wish list for their future checkouts. Websites can further plan to target these kinds of people by analyzing the most frequently added items in the cart and applying new schemes or lucrative marketing strategies, that can tempt the users to finally shop the things added to their wish list.

Below mentioned is the list of commonly known causes for cart abandonment and applicable solutions to address these causes.

1. No display of actual prices

Certain websites display the actual prices only after the users proceed to checkout like shipping costs, taxes, etc. Users might add items to the cart only knowing the gross amount displayed under the product.  Mostly, the users might also still agree to pay the asked amount considering the negligible margin, but if the margin is too high between the gross and net amount, they can decide not to check out and leave the cart as it is.

Solution

Below the products, the vendors can display the net sum of all the applicable amounts on the product, providing a proper bifurcation of cost, taxes, shipping, etc. This makes it convenient for the user to know the actual price and rest all amounts, thus making the total amount known to him and helping him decide whether to add the product to the cart or not.

2. Tough checkout process

User experience is one of the deciding factors of a number of visitors on websites and the convenience of completing the checkout process. More the user-friendly process, the higher is the chance that the user will complete the entire checkout.

Certain things can be taken care of like reducing the number of clicks, subtle graphical interface, etc.

Solution

Here are some of the ways to ease the check out process.

Provide a graphical step-by-step process in the form of a chain and display the steps required for checkout like adding the delivery address, whether express shipping required or not, adding the payment details, entering the required passwords or OTP, and finally acknowledging that the order has been placed.

The user, in this case, gets a clear idea of where he is heading to and how much steps are further required to complete the checkout, which may prompt him internally to quickly finish the steps. Also, data validations and auto-complete features can be added to help the users finish check checkout quickly.

3. Guest checkout not available

This is one of the most widely known causes of cart abandonment. Users usually spend a considerable amount of time analyzing the set of products available online, analyzing the prices and finally proceeding to the checkout process. Once the user reaches the checkout process, it often happens that the user has logged in through an id, not registered.

During such times, it becomes really frustrating for the user to know that they will have to login through a registered id and repeat the entire process once again.

Hence, they will leave the website irrelevant of whether the checkout has been completed or not.

Solution

Guest checkout should be available. Hence, it becomes easier for users to complete the checkout.

4. Security issues

Several users face trust issues while using confidential credentials online, like the fear of a security breach.

Solution

The vendors in such cases can display past experiences or user feedback on how other users have successfully trusted them with private details, mostly related to payments.

The vendors can display their contact numbers near checkout which are immediately reachable for the users, in case any query needs to be addressed while purchasing online before making payments.

The vendors can also add Cash on delivery options. Hence, the users will checkout without having to worry about the payment details issues.

Also, the vendors can use SSL encryption, as its quite common for the users to check whether the URL starts with http or https.

The vendors can also add a note or warning near the checkout process asking the users to disconnect public wifi or other public networks. Instead, use their own private networks.

5. Card blockage issues

One of the really frustrating reasons for not completing the checkout process is card blocking.

Blocking cards from online transactions in cases of entering multiple incorrect One Time Passwords, unpaid standing amount, encountering expired cards, incorrect PIN entered multiple times while transacting, etc. is also one of the potentials causes of not completing the check out process.

Solution

The vendors can display customer care contact numbers of various banks, whose card has been used for the transaction, so that the user can immediately use those details in unblocking the card and can complete the checkout process.

The vendors can also tie-up with banks and display the step by step process on the website if required or can provide links to the bank’s websites so that users can follow the steps which can get the card unblocked.

Another way to deal with this issue is that the blockage of the card should be time-bound. For example, suppose the card got blocked due to entering multiple incorrect passwords, the card can be kept blocked for a period of 24 hours or so, after that duration, the user can again start with the checkout process from where he left it previously.

6. Application of discount codes

Some users are deal chasers. They are so prone to using discount coupons that they might not be willing to check out if coupons or discounts are not handy.

Solution

The website can display coupon codes somewhere on the web page exactly near the check out completion steps in a highlighted way, that users can easily get hold of it. Another way to simplify this is, the website can auto-complete the field required for entering the coupon code. The websites can manage this by passing the coupon codes over the web URL in an encrypted way.

7. The return policy wasn’t satisfactory

Sometimes, the users are skeptical about the fact that what if they didn’t like the product after purchasing.

They might have liked the product and hence added to the cart, but they are not completely sure before making the payment and hence, they leave the process as it is in between.

Solution

Common queries of the users can be addressed by displaying the feedback from the users who have purchased similar products. This can provide some confidence to the users who are skeptical of their choices.

The vendors can also improvise their return policies.

The vendors can also provide money-back policies along with product replacement options.

Vendors can display links to all the content available online regarding product replacement or money back policies near the check out process.

Various customer support options can also help.

8. No express shipping available

Sometimes, the users are in dire need or urgency to get the product. Or they purchase online because they are left with time constraints or other difficulties in purchasing the product.

But the vendors do not have faster delivery options. This can sometimes turn out to be a huge disappointment for the users.

Users in such cases are also ready to pay extra amounts.

Solution

With a little additional cost, the vendors should provide an option of faster delivery to address user’s urgencies or time constraints.

It should be a user’s choice whether to go for normal delivery options or faster delivery, and the user can be charged accordingly.

9. Adding products simply to wish list

Some people only add products to the carts, or wish list only because they liked it. They might not have genuine intentions to purchase those products. This is something very similar to what we call window shopping in real life scenarios.

Solution

Such customers can be easily targeted when vendors can avail of new schemes on their selected products.

Then, the users might get tempted or can finalize the decisions owing to deals and reduced costs and can finally proceed to checkout.

The next is the solution to this is something like, once the users leave products on the cart, after a certain duration like 30 days or so, the carts should be erased from websites and the products should be made available once again for purchase.

Hence, this will also push the users to think over before adding simply to the cart and leave the cart without checkout or can also prompt users to come to a quick decision on purchasing the products because the carts could vanish and the product stock could be limited.

Such users can also be notified, whenever the cart is on the verge of expiring.