When thinking about offline commerce, it often happens to go into a store and leave, without finalying a purchase. Costumers are lost the moment they leave the store: in purely analogical context we cannot know what drew their attention, the product’s color or size… in short, there is no way you could learn more about your visitors, or target your offers. Fortunately, speaking of e-commerce, if there is one thing that we never miss, is the data: therefore, we must know how to observe and interpret it correctly.
Having a lot of profiling data available is useful, but you have to know how to interpret them correctly to correct the flaws in your e-commerce.
Thanks to careful analysis, we can discover the user’s preferences, even when they don’t complete the purchase. This allows reducing the rate of abandoned web cart by proposing offers and ad hoc products to “re-engage” the potential customer.
Despite the profiling, however, e-commerce managers are still unable to reset the online cart abandonment rate, which is the percentage of consumers who add products in the shopping cart for checkout but does not complete the purchase process.
To increase the conversion rate from user to customer there are several best practices: let’s start from the problems that lead to abandonment and see how to improve the rate of recovering the abandoned shopping carts.
Surprising prices: be transparent about your pricing
Showing partial prices, without IVA or forcing the user to spend much time searching for the shipping methods and relative costs is never a good practice.
Some e-commerce doesn’t show prices including VAT and shipping cost (and eventually custom tariffs when shipping internationally outside of the European Union). Let’s consider that a user adds to the shopping cart a product which cost 100€: when adding the IVA (22%) and shipping costs (on average between €4.90 and €6.90 excluding special transports) the user would see a final price of about 130€. Much more than the expected.
It’s an unpleasant surprise that leads to the abandonment of online shopping carts. To prevent this risk is useful to be transparent about all the involving costs before the checkout. This way, the customer won’t find any additional fees.
Shop with or without an account: don’t force to register
Imagine you are purchasing from an online store that you don’t often visit and knowing that, most likely, you will only buy that product once.
Forcing user registration may seem like the best way to obtain data: however, this imposition often leads to a loss in sales.
It’s not worth creating an account for a site you are not planning to use more than once or if it is merely a fast purchase. This data is confirmed by a 2017 statistic published by Baymard stating that 37% of the surveyed candidates (USA adults) abandon the web shopping cart if they are forced to create an account.
Despite the data, many e-commerce requests mandatory registrations, losing many conversion opportunities. Solving this problem within the checkout process is quite easy: it is possible to keep the registration for whoever desires it, but at the same time, allow to make purchases without an account.
Is this website safe? Users choose reliability.
Just like in the real trade, even in the electronic commerce, there can be no sale without firstly creating a bond of trust between the seller and the buyer: a safe and transparent site encourages the purchase.
Another reason for abandoning an online shopping cart is the lack of security conveyed by the brand. A neglected site, with information on returns, shipments and on the general sales conditions that are difficult to find, do not encourage the user to provide credit card details and complete a purchase.
Therefore, to recover these abandoned shopping carts, it is first necessary to insert the SSL certificate into the website and use the HTTPS protocol.
Furthermore, it is advisable to highlight logos and security protocols when accessing the payment: this way it is easier to create a sense of trust for the potential customer and favor the closure of the check-out.
Another essential element to increase user trust is showing reviews of customers who have already made purchases on the site.
Available payment methods
There are payment methods that you can absolutely not do without if you intend to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate: these aspects depend on the reference market since not all countries use the same circuits.
Forcing user registration may seem like the best way to obtain data: however, this imposition often leads to a loss in sales.
As an example, in the European and American market, PayPal cannot be missing along with cards belonging to the Visa, Mastercard, and American Express circuits. The countersign is often discouraged because it involves additional costs for the end user but, in some cases, it can be essential when you are targeting an audience over 60 years of age.
It’s important to remember that according to the Baymard survey, 8% of consumers abandon the purchase process if they don’t find their preferred payment method available. Therefore, it’s not an element to overlook.
Conclusions: how to take advantage of the abandonment rate of your shopping carts
These are just some of the reasons why the users leave a full shopping cart in an online shop: you may use these ideas, they can really bring great benefits if applied.
It all begins with careful observation of your website’s functionalities and the data collected through the Analytics, and through other specific analysis tools. Once issues are discovered, generally, the implementation costs for the necessary changes will be extremely low.
For more information on how to structure a good CRO strategy, contact us and download our White Paper.