4 Easy Tips to Recover Abandoned Shopping Carts

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Shopping cart abandonment is really a big and all too common issue for ecommerce websites. Missing out on a potential sale due to some technical or non technical reasons that could have been rectified is a real disaster.

The first thing you should do in order to recover abandoned shopping carts is to identify the possible reasons and then treat them separately. This way you can fix most of those issue before they become a problem. The easiest way to identify why a shopper left the store is to ask them directly using an exit pop-up box which appears when the shopper is about to leave. You can also follow up with an email remainder, if you have captured the shopper’s email address beforehand. Here are some common cart abandonment reasons and some easy steps to fix them:

1. Unexpected Costs

Additional costs revealed only after the customer reaches the final sales stage is one of the most common reasons of shopping cart abandonment. No customer likes being surprised with hidden and additional costs.

How to fix:

Communicate your shipping costs and any additional fees early in the checkout process. Offer free of charge shipping as an option, or you can use free shipping promotions to entice shoppers into to placing larger orders in order to qualify.

Start showing the estimated delivery cost from the beginning if free shipping is not feasible. Most ecommerce shopping carts have an option to add a shipping calculator at the beginning of checkout so customers have a better idea of their final costs.

2. Just Browsing For Fun

A large percentage of abandoned shopping carts might be the result of people simply doing comparison shopping or browsing to get the details about the product. If you are thinking that nothing can be done to turn those visitors into customers then you are completely wrong. They are showing interest in your product and services and could end up buying in future.

Here’s how these “just browsing” visitors can be converted into actual paying customers:

Retargeting Campaigns

With the help of re-targeting campaigns, you can serve customized ads to people who visited certain pages of your website. Even if you are not using re-targeting campaigns, you can follow up with them by sending occasional emails about the products they were looking for.

3. On-site Issues

According to Statista, on-site issues are the main reason behind cart abandonment. 24% of customers felt that the site was loading too slowly so they left the cart, while 26% said that navigation was too complicated. All of these issues are related to website speed, navigation and user interface. Although these issues can easily be rectified, only a small percentage of small business owners take these issues seriously.

How to fix:

Test and fix your website for device compatibility, performance and usability. It should be compatible with all the browsers and hosted on an unfailing server. You should also ensure your website is compatible with most mobile devices and tablets. Studies have shown that increasing numbers of customers shop via their mobile phones – over 40% as of 2013.

4. Checkout Problems

A complex checkout process and lack of convenient payment methods are among the most prevalent reasons for cart abandonment.

How to fix:

Allow for guest or fast checkout. Avoid extra, unnecessary fields in the checkout form. You can also use single page checkout. It’s also advisable to offer several convenient options for payment.

Follow the above mentioned tips and turn your shopping cart abandonment issue into an opportunity to land that sale!