How to Stop Cart Abandonment: Advice for Online Store Owners

[Reposted and Updated for 2022] Cart abandonment (CA) is when a customer makes a cart or even starts a check out process for an online order but quits the process before completing the purchase. 

There are a ton of reasons why some people may abandon a shopping cart. They could have been adding up multiple items to see how much they would cost together with no intent of actually purchasing. It’s also possible that a customer wanted to see if shipping was included. The worst case scenario however, is that they decided they don’t trust your business and didn’t want to make the purchase.

Cart Abandonment Statistics for 2022

Across all industries, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.57% (source)

Every year eCommerce business lose $18 billion in sales revenue due to cart abandonment (source)

The cart abandonment rate is a lot higher for mobile, at 85.65% (source)

The number 2 reason people abandon a cart is being forced to create and account (source)

Over half of online shoppers will abandon their cart if they need to re-enter their credit card or shipping info (source)

How To Stop Cart Abandonment

Crunching The Numbers 

The first thing you need to stop cart abandonment is how to measure it. Your CA rate is calculated by dividing the number of completed transactions by the total number of transactions that were initiated. What this rate tells you is how many people intended on making a purchase but ended up not completing it. 

The figure that you get from this is an important metric to keep track of. A high CA rate could indicate things like a poor user experience of even a broken purchase pathway. When you stop cart abandonment, it will lead directly to more sales and an increase of revenue, so let’s focus on some ways of optimizing the checkout flow and minimizing the risk of CA.

Building Trust

You’ve probably made so many sales through your site that it’s possible you just see transaction forms as a formality for making a purchase. After all, the customer has already been convinced they want your product and all that’s left is providing some easy payment information, right? Well that isn’t really the case from your customers point of view. 

When you ask a customer to fill out a transaction form, you’re essentially asking them to give and trust you with all of their private information. You’re asking for their name, address, and all of their credit card information. Rightfully so, they may be a little hesitant to hand all of that over. 

You can actually use transaction forms as an opportunity to establish more trust with your customers. A trust signal like a prominent secure payment logo (Norton Secured, Verified by Visa, etc.) will go a long way. In fact, 61% of consumers have not purchased something online because the website was missing a secure payment logo.

Strategies For Tackling Abandoned Carts

Unfortunately CA is inevitable, people have second thoughts and decide they might not want to purchase something. Fortunately we have 3 tactical strategies you can use to minimize the amount of CA you encounter on your site. 

Simplify checkouts

Less is more. This is especially true when it comes to online checkouts. Don’t make people create an account on your website, often they’ll just decide to shop somewhere else. Instead, offer a checkout where they can simply log in with one of their many social accounts. This makes your customers only one click away from checking out.

Abandoned Cart Emails

Some people may have decided that they don’t want to purchase your product at that exact moment. But, still haven’t given up on the idea of getting it eventually. Abandoned cart emails are an amazing way to entice them into finally making that purchase. You can set them up to reach out to people who left things in their cart. Also, you remind them that their purchase can still be made.

Get this.. Bookmark has an Abandoned Cart Saver available for anyone who sells their products or services online. This means that anytime somebody abandons a cart on your online store, you can set up an automatic email that gets sent directly to that customer reminding them to revisit their order. It’s a simple solution that saves you time that you can spend building your business!

You work so hard optimizing your site and doing everything you can to maximize sales, so don’t let cart abandonment hurt you. Remember to go through your Google Analytics to find out just how much CA is damaging your sales and then implement some of the strategies we talked about to stop CA. Also, know that when you stop cart abandonment, you’re also increasing the trust customers have in your brand.

Stay tuned next week for another blog filled with the knowledge you need to grow your online presence, and don’t hesitate to reach out via Live Chat if you have any questions.