If you run an eCommerce business, I am sure you must have heard of it. If am sure that you must have heard of the frustration that ends ups in a pile of failed potentials sales. I am talking about abandoned carts. The abandoned carts are a by-product of a very old trend that has followed the eCommerce market from the inception. Customers visit your website, add some product(s) in their virtual shopping carts and then disappear in the thin air- one thing to mention, they never return to claim their loaded shopping cart.
Should we ignore it?
Statistics from the last couple of years show that the percentage of shopping cart abandonments has risen exponentially to 70 % till date. It means that out of every 10 visitors, it’s a general site to see 7 of them not completing their order. It’s a statistics that is too big to be ignored, especially when it’s directly linked to your revenue generation. Now, the big question- there are uncountable reasons for why they abandon their shopping carts, so is it wise to spend the crucial time in preventing them from occurring? Or, should we look for the ways to face them so as to minimize the losses?
Prevent it VS Face it
Either of the ways mentioned in the above questions works on the same motive. That is, to minimize the losses and generate revenue from potential conversions. Must, say that ignoring any of the two ways is not a wise suggestion at all. A/B testing and heatmap tracking done on various websites suggest that most of the cart abandonments occur due to some key mistakes that are common in all of the websites. If we could rectify these key mistakes we can prevent the abandonments up to a very large extent. Here, I am going to mention these key points to prevent a major percentage of shopping cart abandonments. After that, we will look for the ways that you can adopt to face them after some uninvited abandonments forcibly occur on your site. There are few questions asked in the below point, you just need to ask yourself these questions.
Ask yourself- why people choose eCommerce sites to shop over offline retails? The answer is very simple; it is very easy, convenient, and quick to shop online rather than visiting a physical market, buy things, and then carry them back home. If this is the major reason for why eCommerce sites are preferred over physical markets, then why to make it more difficult for your customers to shop on your site? The reference is on the checkout process. Making a checkout process easier would be an excellent starting point in your way to prevent shopping cart abandonments.
- Number of pages: Start with reducing the number of pages in your checkout process. For example, PrestaShop, OpenCart, and Magento, the major eCommerce platforms have generic checkout process in a multi-page structure. But, when introduced to the modules and extensions like one-page checkout module, the multi-page structure just vanishes and replaced by a simple one-page checkout structure. The one-page checkout will save your customers from the frustration of lengthy checkout process and frequent page loading. Thus, eliminating a very basic reason for customer frustration from your website.
- Compulsory account registration: This is another eCommerce trend that has proven to be one of the major reasons for customer frustration. Websites ask the visitors to create an account before they can place an order. Sometimes, even the tiniest distraction like filling a registration form, thinking of a new password and then remembering it, can prove to be a major reason for customer frustration. A study says that customers do not like to create an account because they fear to receive spam emails forcibly. Thus, they leave the site and search for someone who does not ask for these things.
Interestingly, they even find that someone very easily, because there are uncountable websites like yours and they are looking for ways to grab customers like these. The solution is, do not ask for compulsory registration, make it optional, allow guest checkout and save their information to create an account automatically. On the whole, just register the guest after checkout is completed.
Some eCommerce sites make a very blusterous mistake by hiding additional costs and conditions. They reveal these hidden terms and fees just at the time of final step in the checkout process. Trust me, it’s a blunder; not a pleasant surprise for your customers. Always be transparent with your customers in terms of pricing and fees related to your products. Make the shipping charges, additional fees, tax to be included, and all relevant information clear like crystal. Reveal all these information at the product pages itself, or you can show them at the very beginning of your checkout process.
If you try to trick your customers, they might fell once, but they will never come back to you and your website ever again.
Information in the sections till now were all related to how you can prevent some major reasons for shopping cart abandonment. It’s a harsh truth that despite all your efforts, some uninvited cart abandonments do occur, and you cannot do anything to stop them. So, why not to face them by converting these carts.
Remind the abandoned customers that they have left something in their cart when they were last online with you. You can do this by sending reminder emails. The reminder emails are a smart way to curb the level of abandoned carts that have already occurred on your site. Just mind one thing that you have to remind them; not bully them. Don’t send messages like, “This is your last call to claim the cart” “hurry there is no time” “It’s now or never” etc. Be clever and polite about the reminder emails. Make something useful from the customer’s point of view.
You can send some offers with your emails. Like an exclusive discount coupon, free shipping or support etc. There is a good news for websites using Magento platform because a Magento abandoned cart extension is available that will provide all the help in the above-mentioned task. The Magento abandoned extension is capable of capturing all the abandoned carts on your store along with the customer’s information like email id, contents in the cart, time of cart abandonment and much more. This Magento extension uses the captured information to send automatic reminders to the abandoned cart customers. The emails can be sent either manually by the site admin, you can set a cron that will perform all the task from capturing the abandoned carts to sending the automatic serial reminders with offers or without offers.
Finally,
On the whole, it is possible to both prevent the shopping cart abandonment and face them at the same time. Extensions like Magento abandoned cart extension will help you fight the already occurred abandonments, while the tips in upper sections will help to prevent a major proportion of abandonments.
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