4 Ways To Avoid Cart Abandonment And Make More Sales

Any seller will tell you cart abandonment is the bane of eCommerce. That’s the eCommerce term used to describe when a customer has added products to their online cart and then left the site without following through with their purchase. It’s naturally a pretty frustrating experience — you’re so close to making that sale, only to fall at the last hurdle! So here are some methods of clinching the sale when it most matters.

1. Exit Popups

The first step in encouraging the would-be customer is checking if they really want to exit at this stage of the transaction. You’ve probably seen them before: they usually say something like “Don’t go!” or “Are you sure?”. By installing a pop-up when a customer either tries to leave the site with items in the cart or when they try to abandon a transaction, you might be able to convince customers to carry out the sale.

The key to the exit only popup is incentives. Spichard Rears, a ecommerce expert at Writinity.com and Lastminutewriting.com, recommends “presenting the customer with a coupon or discount code if they try to abandon their cart. Most of the time customers who leave a transaction at such a late stage are having second thoughts about the cost of their purchase. By providing a coupon if they continue their transaction, they’re more likely to follow through and you’re more likely to get that sale.”

2. Be Transparent

Another reason shoppers abandon their purchases is that they’ve been surprised with fees at the last moment. Some eCommerce stores think they’re being clever by withholding shipping costs or tax additions until the final stages of a transaction, in the hopes that a customer will just carry on out of politeness or convenience, but that’s rarely the case.

Providing customers with as much information about the full cost of their purchases will win you good favor with them and make them more likely to carry out a transaction to its fullest. You can achieve this by listing your shipping information on your product pages, or including a shipping calculator to work out more complicated costs.

3. Keep It Convenient

Sometimes the most minor inconvenience is enough to make a customer abandon their order. “In the oversaturated eCommerce market, customers are accustomed to having their choice of retailers for the same or similar products,” says Toss Relfer, a business blogger at Draftbeyond.com and Researchpapersuk.com. “If they think your process is more difficult than it should be, most won’t think twice about abandoning their purchase and going with another retailer.”

One of these inconveniences is having to set up an account on your website. Of course, you want customers to create accounts as it gives you a better position to retain them for future purchases. But if you force a customer to create an account before purchasing you are practically giving them an excuse to move on to another retailer that doesn’t require it. Allow guest checkout on your store and see your sales numbers increase.

4. Don’t Give Up!

Even if a customer does abandon their sale, try not to give up hope. There are a few ways you can remind customers that they have a cart ready to go, and hopefully, they’ll come back to their abandoned purchase. Sending emails reminding customers they have items in the cart, or something as simple as displaying an icon on the cart page could be enough to bring the customer back

Takeaways

These are only a couple of ways to put a stop to cart abandonment, but they all revolve around the customer experience. If you really want to put a stop to customer abandoning their purchases, you’ve got to get into their head. It means that something is stopping them from going all the way through with their purchases.

This might be anything from bad UI, unexpected prices or confusing page navigation. The good news is they wouldn’t have got that far if they weren’t interested in buying your products, so hald of you job is done. You just need to convince them that you are the right store for them.

Author's bio

Ashley Halsey is a professional writer at Luckyassignments.com and Gumessays.com who has been involved in many projects throughout the country. Mother of two children, she enjoys traveling, reading and attending business training courses.