High shopping cart abandonment rate has always remained a big concern for online merchants. According to some industry statistics, approximately 80-90% of online shoppers abandon their carts for reasons best known to them, but this severely affects high spirits of online merchants. After all, they are making every attempt starting from embracing responsive designs to offering generous discounts to their target customers. In this post, we are going to discuss the top five tips to minimize instances of shopping cart abandonment in e-commerce.
1. Ensure quick loading for every page
As per the research findings of Radware done in 2013, it is clear that even a delay of 2 seconds in page loading during transaction means a rise in cart abandonment rate by a whopping 87%. At maximum, online shoppers have the patience to wait for 4 seconds. They do not hesitate to switch over to your competitor’s website if you are offering them a poor user experience. In this age of fast internet connection, you cannot give any excuse for a long wait time. So, go for website speed optimization service by a professional and reap benefits.
2. Diversify payment options
Allow your customers to choose from multiple payment options instead of just offering one or two. You need to understand the fact that many of your target customers may not have an easy access to a credit or debit card. Even if they have, security concerns deter them from using the same for an online payment. According to a leading payment processing company WorldPay, alternative methods of payments i.e. other than credit and debit cards will account for over 50% of all the online transactions within the next few years. Many online merchants are even offering COD facility i.e. cash-on-delivery.
3. Allow shoppers to shop without registration
Offer a guest checkout if you seriously care to reduce the rate of cart abandonments because most of the shoppers dislike this very much. They choose to abandon their shopping carts rather than filling all the details. They simply do not have the will or time to go for the registration when the same products can be purchased online easily from any other e-commerce site without undergoing the same.
4. Make the checkout process simple and short
Ensure a good design for the checkout process so that it remains simple and short. Such a design must convey clearly to the online shopper that what are the remaining steps to complete the online transaction. Your checkout process should also have a provision to show thumbnails of products added to the cart and an edit option so that they can add or delete a selected product as per their wish in a hassle-free manner. Include a clear call to action button to drive them to complete the transaction. It is also a good practice to give them the option to save the cart for future. You can also display a dedicated toll-free helpline number on the checkout page. This will encourage shoppers to place a call to seek help if they encounter any problem during the checkout process.
5. Offer free or flat rate shipping
High shipping costs often deter shoppers from buying the products. Instead, offering them free shipping or flat rate shipping will definitely work as a catalyst to stop them from abandoning the shopping cart. Or else, you can also choose to estimate shopping carts at an early stage so that by the time they add a certain product in the cart, they will know what they are going to pay for the same. Many online merchants instead set tabs for shipping rates for example; they charge a shipping rate of $10 if the total amount of all the products added to the cart is more than $100 and offer free shipping on products with higher profit margins.
Final Thoughts:
Apart from the above five tips, it is best to be aware of stock availability so that your customers do not have to abandon cart simply because you do not have the same in your stock. You need to remember that a message like “no longer in stock” during checkout gives a bad shopping experience to any customer. There is a tremendous potential in the e-commerce business. You need to just be a little aware and implement the above-mentioned tips to minimize the rate of shopping cart abandonment.
This article is written by Harshal Shah, CEO & Founder of Elsner Technologies, a global IT consulting firm with expertise in delivering IT solutions on Web, Mobile and Cloud. He is a tech evangelist with a reputation to provide optimum solutions for business automation and solving real life problems with the power of IT. You can follow him at Google+.
