5 Strategies to Reduce Cart Abandonment and Boost Sales

Trying to boost your ecommerce sales is no easy matter. There are a lot of factors that determine whether or not a person will make a purchase. And there are a lot of steps during the sale process where a person can change their minds. One of the crucial steps is when a customer puts something in their cart and needs to finalise their sales. Some statistics put the average cart abandonment rate at just under 70%. This means that out of 10 carts, 7 won't finalize the purchase. For this reason, we will use this article to give you five cart abandonment strategies and outline how you can best implement them.

Cart abandonment strategies

The following strategies are based on the most common reasons for abandonment. As you can imagine, not all ecomm stores have the same reasons for their abandonment rates. Depending on who your customers are, how your store is optimized, and what products you are selling, there could be various other reasons why your customers abandon their carts. So, we would invite you to regard the following strategies as ideas. Ideally, you will understand how they impact the customer's experience and how they can improve ecomm sales. And you will also learn how they help convince customers to finalize their purchase and maintain their loyalty to your store.

Have a clear return and refund policy

When people are scrolling through a store they are mostly concerned with what they like. They will think about how they would use certain products, and whether specific products are worth the price. But, once the time comes to finalize their payment, they will have a set of thoughts that they haven't considered so far. One of which is whether or not they can get a refund.

Before they choose to spend their money, the customer will wonder whether they can return the product if they aren't satisfied with it. The steeper the cost of the product is, the more they will wonder about your return and refund policy. Therefore, it is your best bet to have a clear, easily readable refund policy available from the checkout page. Customers shouldn't have to abandon their cart in order to view your refund policy. Instead, they should be able to quickly view it, understand it within a couple of seconds, and finalize their purchase.

Comparison shopping

It isn't uncommon for customers to reach the end of their shopping, only to wonder whether they could get a better deal. Without comparing their products with similar ones, they won't know whether they are making a cost-effective purchase or not. This often leads to them opening another window in their browser and looking for alternatives. And the odds of them abandoning your cart grow exponentially as time goes on.

The best way to combat this is to offer comparison shopping. It is paramount that you monitor your customers and that you are aware of what they put in their carts. By doing so, you can achieve two things. Firstly, you can provide products necessary for comparison in the same window. If you have similar products in your own store, great. If not, show products from your competitors that you know you will outshine. Of course, you can make all of this fully automatic. Through dynamic content like web stories, you can look to improve customer experience and help them shop with ease. Remember that your goal is to keep them in your shop until they finalize their purchase. So, don't shy away from providing reviews and ratings for the compared items, and highlighting the benefits they will get from doing business with you.

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Another way to use web stories is to offer products that naturally relate to the ones that the customers are considering. For instance, if they are looking at running shoes, it is only natural to offer socks. If they are looking for lamps, you can look to offer lightbulbs. Simple enough, but highly effective in both improving customer satisfaction, and increasing your revenue. Keep in mind that this is only one of the ways in which you can emphasize products with in-app stories.

Offer free shipping

It has been widely accepted as a fact that people hate shipping fees. Even if they are a fraction of what they will pay for products, they will still hate the fact that they need to pay extra in order to get them shipped. Seeing that shipping fees are often presented at the end of a purchase, this often leads to customers abandoning their carts. So, if you want to avoid this from happening, optimize your business so that you can offer free shipping. Doing so can even boost your conversion rates if you introduce the story earlier in the customer's journey.

Keep in mind that by offering free shipping you don't have to experience a loss in revenue. You just have to optimize your business better. For instance, you can outline a minimum amount that a customer needs to order in order to be eligible for free shipping. You can look to optimize your shipping to be as cost-effective as possible, even if takes more time. And while that type of shipping would be free, you can also offer faster shipping for those willing to pay. One of the ways in which you can provide shipping info is with a shoppable story. All in all, there are different ways to implement free shipping into your business practice without it hurting you. And the sooner you do so, the sooner you will reduce the cart abandonment rate.

Provide ample payment options

In order to run a successful ecomm store, you need to provide ample payment options to your customers. The last thing you want is for them to reach the end of their purchase, and only realize that they cannot pay you in the way they prefer. Or that they are even unable to pay you. So, if you wish to properly manage ecomm sales you need to provide ample payment options. Ideally, you would have all of the following:

• Credit Card Payment.
• Debit Card Payment.
• Cash on delivery.
• Bank Transfer.
• Direct Deposit.
• App Payments
• E-checks.
• E-wallets.
• Cryptocurrency.

At the bare minimum, you should have Credit and Debit Card Payment options. But, the more you make available, the better.

Improve shop performance

The last of our cart abandonment strategies is the one you should tackle regardless of not you have poor abandonment rates. Namely, in order to run a successful ecomm store, you need to ensure that it runs well. If a store loads slowly, doesn't load completely, or gets buggy, you can rest assured that your customers will leave it. Not only will they be frustrated while using it, but they also might see you as an unsafe website/app. Know that you are handling their money. And that they are always judging whether or not they can safely input their financial information.
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Unfortunately, it isn't quite as easy to develop and maintain a well-running online store. If you are already experiencing performance issues, your best bet is to employ a programmer to check them out. With luck, you may see significant improvement from a couple of tweaks and updates. But, if you haven't managed your online store for a while, you may need a bigger overhaul. Also, keep in mind that your store needs to be fully optimized for mobile content. This goes for both the content you use and the programming behind it. At the end of the day, know that it is paramount that your store is responsive and quick to load. Without it, no quality offers or seasonal discounts will save you.

Final thoughts

What we've outlined so far are the most common reasons why people abandon carts. Therefore, our cart abandonment strategies should be able to cover any standard store. If you feel that you've already covered all that we've listed, and you still have abandonment issues, you may need to dig deeper. As we said, there is a full customer journey to consider as they go through your store and finalize your purchase. The better you can understand this journey, and its various parts, the more ecomm sales you will have.

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