How to Design an Abandon Cart Free Ecommerce Site
It takes energy, time and effort to drive targeted traffic to your website.
Unfortunately, you can do all the work and still lose customers in the last stage of the buyer’s journey. Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges facing e-commerce business owners.
The average rate of online shopping cart abandonment is 69.57% across all industries. With such high numbers, any small thing you can do to improve follow-through increases revenue and reduces your abandonment rates.
What are some of the factors causing people to walk away before clicking the complete button? How do you stop abandoned carts? We’ll look at some design tips to improve your numbers and encourage leads to finish the sale.
1. Make Checkout Easy
People are busy. Many juggle work, family, hobbies and other responsibilities. They shop in their spare time as they ride the commuter train to and from work, wait in a doctor’s office or sit in the bleachers at their child’s soccer practice. If you make the process to complete the transaction too complex, you’re going to lose them.
Instead, look for opportunities to create a one-click checkout. Team up with Facebook or Google to collect information from accounts the user already logged into. Offer PayPal as a payment option, so form fields are pre-filled. Automate whatever you can to simplify the process.
2. Improve Your Onboarding
Consumers want things to run without glitches. About 40% of abandonments occur because the customer ran into a problem during the onboarding process. For example, they can’t get their information to upload, or don’t know what step to take next. As a result, they either leave or bounce to a competitor’s website. If you improve your onboarding, you can increase your conversion rates.
Take the time to go through every step of onboarding. Are there any glitches? You may want to enlist the help of a few others to check out the system and make sure everything functions properly on both desktop and mobile devices.
3. Send Abandoned Cart Emails
Users who almost complete the sale and then bounce away have likely shared their contact information. Have an email ready to go that addresses them by name and mentions the product in their cart. Sometimes, a simple reminder is all they need to motivate them to complete the purchase. The more personalized the email, the more impact it will have.
4. Offer a Buyer’s Journey Map
At the beginning of the buyer’s journey, people may wonder how many steps they must complete to purchase an item. Give them a roadmap showing the stages they’ll go through. Seeing the phases allows them to decide if they have time to complete the transaction or should return at a later time. Explain what the process is from start to finish.
5. Analyze Shipping Costs
If you look at internal data and realize people abandon their carts after you give them shipping costs, it might be time to come up with a less expensive delivery method. Perhaps you have some wiggle room in your product pricing and can charge a bit more for the item to afford free shipping. If customers order over a certain amount, it is common to provide complimentary shipping. Think through your costs and how to pass on savings to your buyers.
6. Allow Guest Ordering
Some people aren’t comfortable sharing their information, such as a telephone number. While you do need an email to send confirmation messages and tracking details, you can limit how much other info you collect. You can also assure them you don’t keep the information on file past a certain point or use it for purposes other than fulfilling their order.
With so many reports of small business databases getting hacked, people are leerier than ever of sharing private details. Understand that not everyone wants their information kept on file.
7. Provide Your Own Comparisons
Sometimes people bounce away to check the price on a competitor’s site or see if they can find the item elsewhere. Give this information for them, and you avoid the risk of them bouncing away. It also gives you the upper hand because you see what your competitors offer and nullify any other brands’ advantages. If they promote free shipping, figure out how to provide the same.
List what you offer and what they do in a table. Use green checks or the word “Yes” to show you have all the same features and then some. A side-by-side list keeps visitors from leaving to seek out the same information. The longer you keep them on your site, the better chance you have to turn a browser into a buyer.
8. Offer Multiple Payment Options
If you only take bank payments, you’re going to drive away a lot of potential customers. Offer a variety of payment options, and consumers can choose the one they feel safest using. For example, they may want to use PayPal because of its reputation for making sure the customer contract gets fulfilled. On the other hand, they may want to use a credit card, because they’re protected against fraud if their number is compromised.
Don’t limit yourself to one payment type. Take as many kinds as possible, and make the process easy for users.
Tweak Your Cart
Run diagnostics on your shopping journey from time to time. When do people abandon the cart? Figure out their reasoning and take steps to improve any issues. The more attention you pay to the checkout process, the more likely your customers will follow through with the purchase.
Lexie is a web designer and UX strategist. She loves taking her goldendoodle on long runs and checking out local flea markets. Visit her blog, Design Roast, and follow her on Twitter @lexieludesigner.
