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.