Abandoned carts are an issue that all businesses grapple with, both in-store and online. People abandon their shopping carts for a multitude of reasons – in fact, Statista estimates as many as 88% of online shoppers are clicking away before converting.
While some cart abandonment triggers are unavoidable, the abandonment rate is often tied to a kink in the shopping experience that ultimately thwarts the checkout process.
Tips to avoid cart abandonment include:
- Understanding cart abandonment, as defined by Shopify
- Cart abandonment statistics
- How cart abandonment is calculated by Shopify
- The top reasons for cart abandonment
- How cart abandonment can affect your Shopify store
- Optimization strategies to reduce cart abandonment
Read on to find out everything you need to know about cart abandonment and learn how implementing better user experience and white label payment options can improve conversion.
What is cart abandonment?
Cart abandonment is exactly what it sounds like – customers are clicking away from an ecommerce site before going through the checkout.
This is an issue for obvious reasons – all the effort (and investment) spent getting your target audience through the sales funnel becomes futile. It’s hard-fought money slipping through your fingers.
It’s pretty straightforward to understand what shopping cart abandonment is and why it’s a problem – the hard part is pinpointing the reasons customers are abandoning their carts in the first place. (Don’t worry – we’ll get there.)
What is the average cart abandonment rate?
The quick (general) answer is 88%, according to Statista.
Of course, it’s a longer story. Understanding cart abandonment rate is one of the big questions among marketers. Of course, there’s no single catch-all number – it can vary widely based on the product, industry, and even location.
However, there are some helpful averages out there – the folks at drip.com analyzed cart abandonment rate from several studies and landed on the Baymard Institute’s study which found that on average 7 out of 10 shoppers won’t finish their transaction.
It’s even more severe for mobile users – according to drip.com, 86% of mobile shopping carts are abandoned.
The numbers may seem a little all over the place – but the moral of the story is the same: abandoned carts are a struggle that all ecommerce retailers are facing. However, there are many ways to address and improve your user experience to reduce your abandoned cart metrics.
How is cart abandonment calculated?
Shopify’s abandoned cart metric is calculated as follows:
- Define a set period of time (e.g. 24 hours)
- Add up the total number of carts that have been abandoned in that time period to get the total abandoned cart number (e.g. 80)
- Add up the total number of orders placed in that time period to get the total conversion number (e.g. 100)
- Divide the abandoned cart number by the total conversion number (e.g. 80 ÷ 100)
- This figure is the abandoned cart metric (e.g. 80% in 24 hours)
What are the top 5 reasons for cart abandonment?
Before we can improve cart abandonment, it’s vital to know why your customers are walking away at the eleventh hour.
There are many complex reasons for cart abandonment, so it’s important to conduct a detailed audit of your site to investigate why it’s happening to your customers (more on that below). We’ve outlined some of the most common reasons behind shopping cart abandonment here.
1. Extra costs at checkout
The extra cost associated with tax, shipping, and handling is the main reason people click away from a purchase.
What to do about it: Be as transparent about these extra costs as early as possible in the journey.
2. Having to create an account before paying
Having to sign up for an account right before paying is a big put-off for many people.
What to do about it: Offer a guest checkout option that allows customers to bypass the account creation phase.
3. Page speed too slow
Even a few extra seconds of waiting for the checkout screen to load can cause people to balk.
What to do about it: There are many ways to improve site speed – check out the Shopify Help Center for tips.
4. Too many steps and re-entering details
In the same way shoppers don’t want to spend time creating an account, many find it frustrating to go through a long set of steps or enter their details multiple times.
What to do about it: Simplify the user journey as much as possible. Splitit’s white label solution means that the payment phase lives within your branding, which creates less friction and a seamless checkout experience.
5. Coupon code errors
Not being able to get the discount they had planned on due to a coupon error is a major deterrent for customers.
What to do about it: Mistakes happen, but implementing a rigorous quality assurance and testing process before launching a promotion can help to reduce errors.
How cart abandonment can affect your Shopify store
The most obvious impact of abandoned cart on your Shopify store (or any store) is ROI.
Everything dollar you spend, from marketing budget to backend development, is about getting your customers through the checkout – having them walk away after moving partway through that journey can be devastating!
There are also milder, less measurable impacts. If a customer abandons their shopping cart, there’s a reason somewhere – whether it’s due to cost or site experience, brand impression is being affected at some level.
From an operations perspective, it can also cause issues with SEO reporting and acquisition metrics – hard-fought traffic that gets lost in the abandoned cart phase can skew the perception of the success of your campaigns.
You could be doing a fantastic job at attracting new customers to your site and letting this success slip through your fingers due to abandoned shopping carts.
How can checkout abandonment optimization help you?
There are many areas across a website that can be improved to reduce abandoned carts, and the checkout is the mothership. Providing a seamless experience in your checkout is vital to ensuring your customers convert successfully.
Optimizing your checkout doesn’t have to be a major endeavour – start auditing the experience by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, and look out for:
- Number of steps: How long does it take to get from the basket to the payment page?
- Effort: How many fields are customers required to fill out? What sort of information do they need to provide?
- Price transparency: Are you providing a complete total price that includes shipping and handling at the earliest stage possible?
- Promotions: Is it easy to find relevant discounts, promotions, and perks within the checkout environment?
- Trust: Does the checkout look trustworthy and professional? Are there assurances of security and explanations behind why customers need to provide personal information?
- Payment solutions: Have you provided a variety of payment options that suit the needs of your target audience, in a clear and straightforward way?
5 simple fixes to reduce the abandonment rate and increase conversion
An abandoned cart represents a customer relationship worth pursuing. We’ll cover many tactics that will help to keep online shoppers engaged, reduce shopping cart abandonment, and bring customers back through cart recovery techniques.
These tips can apply to ecommerce sites in general, but will mention features offered by the Shopify ecommerce platform.
Tips to avoid cart abandonment include:
- Simplifying your checkout process
- Testing your user experience
- Implementing clear CTAs
- Offering incentives for creating an account
- Communicating with customers who abandon carts
- Giving shoppers a variety of payment options
- Providing free shipping
1. Simplify your checkout process to avoid cart abandonment
The checkout process begins long before your shopper makes it to the cart. To reduce shopping cart abandonment, ecommerce sites should have clear navigation guiding online shoppers to product pages that are simple, yet comprehensive.
At a minimum you’ll need an image, price, description, purchase button, and a checkout page that lists all items in the cart along with payment and shipping options.
Use clear product images, videos, and detailed descriptions on your product pages. Provide at least one clear product image to give your shoppers a “real-world” idea of what the product will look like when they receive it. If your product lends itself to a demonstration of use, include a short video.
Describe the product, hitting the points you think shoppers will care about most. For example, if selling cookware, be sure to explain aspects like materials, construction, oven safe temperature, and whether it is dishwasher safe.
Many people who are confident about a product have no qualms about making a purchase.
Further tips: Expert Advice to Improve Product Pages
2. Test the checkout process
When setting up your Shopify store, enlist a few people to shop and give feedback on the process. Sometimes you’re too close to your ecommerce store to be objective. Let’s face it—it’s your baby. And, your baby could never be ugly in your eyes!
Have your testers go through the entire purchase process from product page to shopping cart to checkout and ask them to complete a detailed survey. If you want to test how your site functions on a larger scale when you experiment with different elements, you should consider split testing, also known as A/B testing.
Further tips: A Beginner’s Guide to A/B Testing
3. Make your CTA buttons clear and concise
Shoppers shouldn’t have to crack a code to make a purchase. Reduce shopping cart abandonment by labelling buttons with wording that makes them feel empowered and creates a sense of urgency.
Phrases like ‘buy now,’ or ‘add to cart,’ give customers intuitive clues about the next step in the process.
Further tips: How to Create the Perfect Call to Action
4. Offer incentives to shoppers who create accounts
Provide a guest checkout as an option in the shopping cart, but entice your online shopper with incentives if they create an account (such as 10% off of a future order).
Assure them that, although they can select guest checkout, creating an account is a quick process and will save them time when they make their next purchase.
When a shopper creates an account, you’ll have their email address (score!) allowing you to communicate with them, thereby building a relationship (another way to reduce shopping cart abandonment).
Repeat shoppers will also be able to customize their experience with visibility of past orders, order status, product recommendations based on past purchases, and saved preferred payment methods for faster future purchases.
Further tips: What Keeps Online Shoppers From Creating Accounts
5. Communicate with shoppers who abandon carts
You can view payment events, cart recovery data, and other shopping cart information through the Abandoned Checkout feature on Shopify. You can also reach out to the customer via their email address and refer to them by name.
As a proactive measure, you can also use a pop-up offer when they attempt to abandon the cart. You can also offer a discount after the fact to complete a purchase, sending them a secure link to their shopping cart.
Further tips: How to Write a Cart Abandonment Email and Recovering Abandoned Checkouts
6. Give shoppers multiple payment options
It’s a great idea to provide the popular payment options such as a credit card or ewallet, as well as new options through a buy now, pay later (BNPL) solution like Splitit.
A BNPL solution makes ecommerce sites attractive because it offers payment flexibility. Shoppers can pay over time in installments, and get products right away.
Some shoppers will abandon their carts if their preferred method is not available, especially if they are just getting to know you.
Be sure to have these options at a minimum, presented in a simple and easy-to-navigate user experience:
- Credit card
- Debit card
- PayPal
- Apple Pay
- Samsung Pay
- Google Pay
- BNPL solution (Splitit)
Some of these options may require the use of plugins as well as the Shopify Payments gateway which is available in specific countries and regions.
Further tips: Splitit FAQs and Shopify Payments Requirements
7. Provide shoppers with free or reduced shipping costs
According to Statista, 63 percent of digital shoppers abandoned carts in 2018 due to high shipping costs. In a recent compiled study by BayMard Institute, spanning several years of cart abandonment statistics, extra fees like shipping were the top reason shoppers called it quits on a purchase.
To reduce shopping cart abandonment, you can employ options like offering free or reduced shipping costs on selected items, free shipping once a shopper reaches a certain dollar amount, or even a free shipping coupon code. Just make sure you remain profitable and it’s a win-win situation for all.
Further tips: Why Free Shipping Matters in Ecommerce
How Splitit can help reduce your abandoned cart rate
A white label BNPL solution can improve your user journey and reduce abandoned cart metrics. It can help create a seamless brand experience for your customers and provide a flexible, budget-friendly solution that will help them convert.
Let us show you how alternative payments can increase conversion rates and reduce abandoned carts.
Deciding between Shopify and BigCommerce? Read our blog comparing the difference between these two mega e-commerce platforms.