There are few things more frustrating to an online retailer than shopping cart abandonment – when a customer starts the checkout process but jumps ship before completing the order.
It represents missed opportunities, unrealized revenue potential, and moreover, it potentially robs you of a repeat customer.
While you can write off a few abandoned carts as “the nature of shopping,” once you see that abandonment rate climb over 70%, you need to do some soul searching.
What spurs your customers to opt out of their purchases? What aren’t you offering people? And what can you as a retailer do to combat shopping cart abandonment?
In this post, let’s explore five tried and tested ways to improve the stickiness of your checkout experience.
Contents
Develop a Personalized App With Your Business Goals in Mind
Often, a customer’s propensity towards finishing an order boils down to their user experience. Whether they know it consciously or not, they want their customer journey to be effortless; they want the entire process, from discovery to option appraisal, checkout and completion, to be intuitive, accessible and seamless.
You have a say in that journey. If you’re concerned by your shopping cart abandonment rate, consider partnering with app experts who can personalize your retail app.
The reason “personalization” is so important here is that you want the app focused on your customer, not an indefinable every-customer.
Find a partner like TheAppLabb who takes an interest in your business, working to understand your business goals, KPIs and brand.
They can help guide the customer journey through intuitive, simplified designs.
For instance, you might try adding a progress bar throughout the checkout process, or emerging tech like AR to help customers see themselves in the product they’re looking to buy – literally. The sky’s the limit here.
Make Checkout Effortless
During the development process, you can turn your attention to specific detractors that contribute to cart abandonment. A key detractor for many customers is effort – the work they have to put in to get to the end.
To address effort, take a look at the number of fields you require a customer to fill out in the checkout process. According to the Baymard Institute, the average checkout flow contains roughly 15 form fields.
Think of these fields as small hoops through which your customer has to jump. Are they all necessary, or can you pare them down?
Consider Removing the Sign-in Requirement
It’s always helpful to think like a customer. If you were making a simple purchase at the grocery store, say, would you want to sign up to be a member of the grocery store before you bought a box of cereal?
To potentially improve your abandonment rate, consider guest checkouts (if you haven’t already). An appreciable number of average customers want a strictly commercial relationship with their retailers.
(In other words, they aren’t always interested in newsletters and emails). Further, many customers are wary of giving away their private information online.
If it’s a sticking point for customers – and it often is – you should consider removing the “sign up” requirement in your checkout process.
Make Paying More Accessible
Finally, payment inaccessibility might hinder a potential customer from completing a transaction. For instance, if your app only accepts credit cards, but they prefer Apple Pay, they might lose interest.
The solution here is simple: allow more payment options. Talk to your app experts about building new payment methods into your app.
Promos and Free Delivery Offers
Lastly, let’s address two more contributors to cart abandonment: comparison browsing and sticker shock.
The former is mostly a natural by-product of the way people shop online these days. Consumers tend to consult a few sources before deciding which retailer to buy from (the so-called “multi-tab mentality”).
To lure them your way, you might consider offering promotions through your app.
At the end of the process, sticker shock might discourage a customer. Once they see the final total with shipping included, they might quickly weigh their options and decide that the extra cost isn’t worth it to them.
If possible, consider offering free shipping; you can set minimum order and geographical limits on the offer to make the cost easier on you.
To summarize, if you’re worried about customers slipping through the cracks, take charge.
Partner with app experts to improve the user experience, and have them add payment options, a streamlined checkout process and guest checkout function to your app. Finally, consider offering promos and free delivery to seal the deal!
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