Do you want to reduce shopping cart abandonment and get consumers to commit to the conversion? Read on for three ways to make it happen.
Shopping cart abandonment — when a customer places an item in their online shopping cart but then exits the page before following through with the purchase — one of the biggest snags for online retailers.
As the online retail space becomes increasingly more crowded, businesses have to dial in and figure out just why so many of their customers are stepping away from their carts before confirming their purchase.
Last year Internet Retailer discovered that companies lose more than $18 million in sales because of this epidemic. Reasons for these abandonments range from unexpected costs in the checkout process to poor delivery options.
If you have seen some upsetting trends in your checkout pages perhaps it’s time to take a closer look and see if you could enjoy an upsurge in conversions from the following low-cost strategies.
Simplify the Checkout Process
Did you know that more than 75% of shoppers who are required to register before they purchase a product online end up abandoning their cart all together?
In the same study conducted by User Interface Engineering customer purchases increased by 45% when this registration wall was removed.
What’s the takeaway here? Make the checkout process as simple and as painless as possible. Looping the customer in to an email list is an absolute must for list building and remarketing. Get these details after the purchase is completed and in the most unobtrusive way possible.
The Abandoned Cart Email
Abandoned cart emails are a proven winner when it comes to getting those customers to reengage and hopefully commit to their purchase, but the logistics of delivering these emails can be the tricky part.
The way that customers interact with these emails is different across all industries. While a series of reminder emails might work for one niche, it might be disastrous for another.
What should you glean from this? Test. And when you’re done with that test, test some more. Honing in on open and click through rates is what sets apart the amateurs from the dilettantes. Even tipping the scale a fraction of a percentage can mean plenty of revenue when operating with high volume
Timing is Everything
It probably will come as no surprise to you but online shoppers have short attention spans. Incredibly short attention spans to be precise. In another study carried out by MIT, research showed that 90% of all of these leads died out in a little under an hour. Further, the studied companies remarketing efforts were most effective in the 12 hours after these carts were abandoned.
This problem is best solved through automated emails or trigger emails that are sent to the customer automatically after your system detects and abandoned cart.
Investing in this technology all depends on the size and scale of your business but doing so can have overwhelmingly positive results. Forrester Research showed that a trigger email series could increase e-retailers’ revenue by 25-40%
For more on getting your customers to commit, check out this blog.