3 Tips for Reducing Your Cart Abandonment Rate

We’ve all been there.

You’re browsing the website of your favorite store, see an item you like, and impulsively add it to your cart.

A couple of seconds later, your mind changes. Maybe you check your bank account and decide the price tag is too high. Or maybe you just get distracted and no longer feel compelled to purchase anything.

So you leave the website, forever abandoning that little cart you started.

You’re not the only one.

Millions of carts are abandoned all across the world wide web every day.

Why?

Because shoppers are fickle: they’re often influenced by moment-to-moment emotions when making purchases. And while leaving products behind in a cart is no big deal for most shoppers, it’s a major annoyance for online retailers.

So annoying, in fact, that it’s a metric actively tracked so it can be reduced: the pesky, shopping cart abandonment rate.

Unfortunately, abandoned carts come with the territory when owning an ecommerce store. Everyone doing business online encounters them, but there are methods that may help to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate and keep it at an acceptable level.

In this article, we’ll discuss what an acceptable cart abandonment rate is. Then we’ll offer three tips that your ecommerce store can use to reduce abandoned carts going forward.

How much shopping cart abandonment is simply unavoidable?

Ecommerce store owners know the feeling.

The excitement when you log in to your website’s shopping app and see a live purchase happening. Your shopper finds your product catalog, selects a product, adds it to his cart, and then…gone. The shopper has left your website without making a purchase, only to leave behind an abandoned cart.

​Unfortunately, this is “normal” in the world of e-commerce.
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By normal we mean that it happens often. But just how often should you expect customer experiences with your store to end in abandoned carts?

Well, that depends on the industry.

According to a Statista study conducted in March 2020, the automotive industry had the highest shopping cart abandonment rate at around 96.88% of engagements.

But the overall average cart abandonment rate for all industries in March 2020 was 88%.

That’s right. Only 12% of carts on average converted to purchases.

What’s normal, or acceptable, depends on your industry, niche, and the unique factors relating to your store. But one thing we can all agree on: the fewer abandoned carts the better.

Using Google Analytics and benchmarking data against yourself over time, you’ll learn what an acceptable shopping cart abandonment rate for your store looks like.

Here are some steps you can take right away to start reducing abandoned carts:
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​        1. Encourage emotional or impulse buying behavior by implementing  saved carts and incentives

When brainstorming for solutions to reduce shopping cart abandonment rates in your e-commerce store, start by thinking about your own experience as an online shopper.

​How often do you casually browse websites, as opposed to actively searching for a product that you have full intention of buying?

Chances are that most of the time you’re just browsing.

And that’s true of almost all the visitors to your store as well.

But did you know that casual browsers have immense purchase conversion potential if the right tactics are used?

By adding some simple plugins and incentives to your store, you can capitalize on the casual shopper’s emotional connection to your products and impulsive decision-making.

For example, e-commerce store owners using the WooCommerce platform can install the Save for Later plugin. This allows shoppers to save their carts on your store’s website if they decide not to make a purchase now.

Later on, you can send those same shoppers reminder emails about their open carts. If a shopper sees your emails at the right time, their impulse to buy may be irresistible and may result in their formerly abandoned cart converting to a purchase. 

​Another tactic to capitalize on emotional purchasing behaviors is to try adding free gifts to purchases. A small incentive could be just enough to turn an abandoned cart into a converted cart.

Free gift incentives are also proven to help increase your customer’s average order value or AOV, also leading to greater revenue for your business.

        2. Keep high delivery costs from scaring your customers away

Nearly every store owner knows it’s important to keep delivery costs as low as possible.

Not only is it good for your customers but it’s also good business practice. But what if high delivery costs are unavoidable, and perhaps even warranted, depending on the products you’re shipping.

If the cost of delivery is the key driver of your shopping cart abandonment rate, what are the potential solutions? Is there a good time and place to present your delivery costs to the customer so that fewer visits end in abandoned carts?

​Generally, there are only two options:

1. At the beginning of the customer engagement: some e-commerce experts believe that notifying your customers about extra-high delivery costs at the very start of an engagement will reduce abandoned carts. The theory is that customers who aren’t serious about purchasing the items at hand will see the high cost and bounce from your site before adding anything to their carts. This means fewer customer engagements, but it will also contribute to a lower shopping cart abandonment rate.
2. Right before checkout: on the contrary, other e-commerce experts say to hold off on notifying your customers about extra-high delivery costs until right before checkout. The theory here is quite simple: the customer went through the work of finding your product and beginning the checkout process. They obviously want to buy the product and are about to enter their credit card information. If they got this far, they’ll be less likely to be discouraged by the inconvenience of a high delivery cost.

Let’s be clear. There is no right answer. The best thing to do is test it on your customers by moving your delivery cost notification and seeing how it impacts your shopping cart abandonment rate.

Alternatively, you can turn your high delivery costs into an incentive.

Figure out how much your customers need to spend in order for you to still make a profit after covering their delivery costs. Then create a promotion on your website offering free delivery on any orders over that amount.

These types of incentives drive customers to increase their AOV, and they lower your shopping cart abandonment rate.

        3. Avoid lengthy or complicated checkout processes

Checkouts on your website should be seamless.

The temptation to have customers register on your site or enter their contact information before a sale is real. And gathering this information is essential for email marketing.

But data shows that disturbances in the checkout process often lead to abandoned carts.

Email collection needs to be voluntary for the customer. And it should always happen after checkouts are completed.

You want to make sure to not put any roadblocks between a customer who wants to give you money and the checkout button. In other words, treat the point-of-sale as paramount. Yes, collecting emails is extremely important. But nothing is more important at that moment than ensuring your customer has a breezy checkout experience so they don’t get frustrated and leave behind an abandoned cart.

Remember, the majority of retail purchases are made on impulse -- 62% in-store, to be exact, and even more online. Those impulses can just as quickly fade to annoyance if the checkout process is hindered in any way. And there goes your sale and customer.

Partner with Kliken and take your e-commerce business to new heights​

As an e-commerce business owner, you have a lot to think about. Like how to manage all those abandoned carts or reformat your website to make it more user-friendly.

Regardless of what struggles your store is dealing with, expanding your marketing reach is always a good idea. And Kliken is here to help.

We make the process of syncing your store with the Google Shopping & Ads platforms easy. So you can start running Google Ads campaigns almost immediately -- we'll deal with the onboarding headaches.

​As the world’s #1 Shopping and Ads marketing platform, Kliken has helped over 1,000,000 small businesses worldwide grow their sales on Google and get a return of up to 7x their original ad spend. Its proven marketing solutions can help you to unleash the potential of your e-commerce business.

Learn more about how customers use Kliken to grow their businesses online here.

Author: Michael Arnold

Michael is a freelancer from New York City. When he isn’t writing about how Kliken unleashes the marketing, you can find him reading, writing for pleasure, or traveling the globe.