I have a confession to make. I once went shopping to buy food for dinner at a well-known supermarket (I won’t mention which because I still like shopping there), but halfway round I changed my mind and decided to get a takeaway instead. Rather than take everything back, I left my trolley in an empty aisle and sneaked out, feeling guilty.
I don’t think this happens much at real supermarkets but 67.45% of online shopping carts get abandoned before the “buy” step in the purchasing process (source: Baymard Institute). Other sources report an abandonment rate as high as 80.3%.
Why do people abandon shopping baskets?
Here are the top ten reasons people abandon their shopping cart (source: Statistic):
- Unexpected extra costs (eg shipping)
- Just browsing
- Found a better deal elsewhere
- Too expensive
- Decided against buying
- Website navigation too complicated
- Website crashed
- Taking too long
- Excessive security checks and finally, ironically,
- Concerns about payment security.
We’ve probably all experienced these same online shopping frustrations, but what can you do to reduce shopping cart abandonment? Here at Moxie, we take a two-pronged approached to the problem – cutting the pre-abandonment attrition rate and chasing up afterwards.
Pre-abandonment
If you want to encourage more people to complete their purchase you need to make sure their journey contains as little friction as possible.
- Show people images of what they’re buying, put their purchases in a simple, itemised list and make it easier to edit the shopping basket.
- Offer free shipping or at least be up front with the costs.
- Reduce the number of steps needed and avoid lengthy and complicated registrations.
- Use security logos to show that your payment system is safe.
Post abandonment
- Run an email win-back strategy such as Amazon’s wish list, offering discounts for free shipping or money off the product they wanted.
- Re-market by tracking near-miss customers and display re-targeting ads to them when they visit other websites.
- Send an “abandoned cart” email, reminding them what they left behind and asking them why. You could even offer a discount to entice them back.
An abandoned shopping cart is as sad a sight online as it is in the local duck pond; and if you work out how much that lost 67.45% would be worth to you then it’d make you even sadder, so do something about it.