The holidays are on their way, which makes right now the perfect time to start thinking about how you are going to keep your customers engaged. You have probably watched as consumers come to your website, put things in their cart, and then get distracted, navigate away, or simply forget to finish the purchase. This can be extremely frustrating. They got 90% of the way to making a purchase and then never followed through! As the biggest shopping season of the year approaches, here are ten strategies that should help to curb abandoned carts!
Build trust in a transaction.
Have you ever gotten to the shopping cart page of a business’s website and suddenly started to wonder if they are actually safe to purchase from? Most consumers have and most consumers will abandon the webpage and shop elsewhere. You can easily be trust by making sure to display the logos associated with your website’s security, whether it be VeriSign, Norton, McAfee, etc.
Show them how many more steps they have.
If there is more than one step in between putting something in their basket and paying for it, you are simply going to lose people. Why do you think Amazon has introduced that a button that allows you to purchase something right from the project page, without even having to see it in your cart. Your e-commerce website probably does not have that capability, but if you can show your users how many steps they have before the order will be placed, you will hold on to more of them. It provides a small sense of accomplishment each time you complete a step.
Let them see their products on the purchase page.
Not showing them the finalized version of their cart on the order page often means they are going to click back to the cart before actually making a purchase, just to make sure they have everything. This is a distraction, and one that will create distance and time in between putting something in their cart and actually buying it—and you do not want that distance.
Make it easy to get in between the cart and the store.
Once they have added something to their shopping cart, make sure it is easy to either see that item in the cart or to get back to the store and to continue shopping. Navigation between the store and the cart is one of the biggest places that e-commerce stores lose people online. It’s a point of friction, and the process of navigating to your cart or back to your shop should be as frictionless as possible.
Give them lots of payment options.
Most e-commerce stores give you a wide variety of payment options to choose from, ranging from credit and debit cards to Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Why bother? Because if the consumer does not see the possibility to pay with the payment they readily have at hand, they probably will just not make a purchase. Enabling as many payment options as possible will result in fewer abandoned carts.
Make sure your checkout pages have calls to action.
Do not assume that because someone has placed something in their cart that they have already made the decision to buy. Many people load up their carts with items that they like so that they can review them later. They still need incentive to buy, which means that every checkout page should still include a call to action.
Make it possible for the consumer to save their cart.
Want someone to be able to come back to their cart and purchase it, even if they do get distracted or want to
check out your competitors? Make sure that their cart is automatically saved or that they have the option to “save items for later” manually. There is nothing more annoying as a consumer than coming back to a website after being distracted for an hour, only to find that all the items you have carefully chosen are no longer in the cart.
Make it possible to checkout without making an account.
About fifteen percent of people will abandon their carts if they discover that they have to make an account in order to be able to purchase. While you obviously have a vested interest in encouraging them to make an account, if you want to avoid as many abandoned carts as possible, you will make it possible for someone to checkout as a guest. Even if they do have an account, trying to remember or find those log in details could be too much of an obstacle for some customers.
Make all costs clear.
Do not hide the shipping costs until the very last page of the checkout process. This is going to cause most people to abandon their carts, especially if they discover that the costs of shipping are expensive. Customers hate paying for shipping anyway and they will hate paying for it more if they feel like it is being snuck on as a hidden expense on the very last page of the checkout process. Add the shipping cost as soon as possible to the cart.
The holidays are on their way, which makes right now the perfect time to start thinking about how you are going to keep your customers engaged. You have probably watched as consumers come to your website, put things in their cart, and then get distracted, navigate away, or simply forget to finish the purchase. This can be extremely frustrating. They got 90% of the way to making a purchase and then never followed through! As the biggest shopping season of the year approaches, here are ten strategies that should help to curb abandoned carts!
Build trust in a transaction.
Have you ever gotten to the shopping cart page of a business’s website and suddenly started to wonder if they are actually safe to purchase from? Most consumers have and most consumers will abandon the webpage and shop elsewhere. You can easily be trust by making sure to display the logos associated with your website’s security, whether it be VeriSign, Norton, McAfee, etc.
Show them how many more steps they have.
If there is more than one step in between putting something in their basket and paying for it, you are simply going to lose people. Why do you think Amazon has introduced that a button that allows you to purchase something right from the project page, without even having to see it in your cart. Your e-commerce website probably does not have that capability, but if you can show your users how many steps they have before the order will be placed, you will hold on to more of them. It provides a small sense of accomplishment each time you complete a step.
Let them see their products on the purchase page.
Not showing them the finalized version of their cart on the order page often means they are going to click back to the cart before actually making a purchase, just to make sure they have everything. This is a distraction, and one that will create distance and time in between putting something in their cart and actually buying it—and you do not want that distance.
Make it easy to get in between the cart and the store.
Once they have added something to their shopping cart, make sure it is easy to either see that item in the cart or to get back to the store and to continue shopping. Navigation between the store and the cart is one of the biggest places that e-commerce stores lose people online. It’s a point of friction, and the process of navigating to your cart or back to your shop should be as frictionless as possible.
Give them lots of payment options.
Most e-commerce stores give you a wide variety of payment options to choose from, ranging from credit and debit cards to Apple Pay or Google Wallet. Why bother? Because if the consumer does not see the possibility to pay with the payment they readily have at hand, they probably will just not make a purchase. Enabling as many payment options as possible will result in fewer abandoned carts.
Make sure your checkout pages have calls to action.
Do not assume that because someone has placed something in their cart that they have already made the decision to buy. Many people load up their carts with items that they like so that they can review them later. They still need incentive to buy, which means that every checkout page should still include a call to action.
Make it possible for the consumer to save their cart.
Want someone to be able to come back to their cart and purchase it, even if they do get distracted or want to
check out your competitors? Make sure that their cart is automatically saved or that they have the option to “save items for later” manually. There is nothing more annoying as a consumer than coming back to a website after being distracted for an hour, only to find that all the items you have carefully chosen are no longer in the cart.
Make it possible to checkout without making an account.
About fifteen percent of people will abandon their carts if they discover that they have to make an account in order to be able to purchase. While you obviously have a vested interest in encouraging them to make an account, if you want to avoid as many abandoned carts as possible, you will make it possible for someone to checkout as a guest. Even if they do have an account, trying to remember or find those log in details could be too much of an obstacle for some customers.
Make all costs clear.
Do not hide the shipping costs until the very last page of the checkout process. This is going to cause most people to abandon their carts, especially if they discover that the costs of shipping are expensive. Customers hate paying for shipping anyway and they will hate paying for it more if they feel like it is being snuck on as a hidden expense on the very last page of the checkout process. Add the shipping cost as soon as possible to the cart.
Published on November 3, 2016
About the Author: Chris Williams
