10 Ecommerce Tips To Reduce Abandoned Carts & Boost Sales

This post was sponsored by SafeOpt. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.

Are you noticing that the majority of your online shoppers reach the cart stage but drop off before checkout?

All of your ecommerce marketing leading up to checkout may be perfect, but what’s causing your shoppers to change their minds at the last minute?

The truth is, many online shoppers don’t complete purchases. They may add items to shopping carts, only to abandon those carts before finishing the checkout process.

In fact, the average shopping cart abandonment rate across all industries in 2022 is approximately 69.99%.

This translates to lost revenue for an ecommerce website.

Fortunately, we can help you recover shoppers by reducing abandoned carts, improving customer loyalty, and increasing your online sales.

Before we dive into the various strategies you can rely on to reduce shopping cart abandonment and help you maximize sales, let’s learn what abandoned carts are, why shoppers don’t checkout, and what abandoned cart recovery is.

What Is An Abandoned Cart?

When a shopper makes the decision to leave their cart behind and navigate away from your website, they have a low chance of returning on their own to complete their checkout.

Multiple surveys and studies indicate that when shoppers abandon online carts, most won’t return later to complete their purchases.

Because that number is so low, we can make the determination that the shopper has abandoned their cart.

Each time a customer abandons their shopping cart, you miss out on a potential sale.

Many of these shoppers will eventually purchase the same item from a different ecommerce website or brick-and-mortar store after abandoning a cart.

As you can see, not fixing a high shopping cart abandonment rate is a major way you might be limiting your own success.

Why Do Shoppers Abandon Their Carts?

Online shoppers abandon their carts for various reasons; they could be:

• Shopping around to compare prices from various sellers.
• Conducting research on the product or service.
• Looking for a coupon code to use.
• Concerned about payment security.

Luckily, each shopper issue can be resolved with a solid abandoned cart recovery strategy.

What Is Abandoned Cart Recovery?

Abandoned cart recovery is a type of online marketing strategy that focuses on converting abandoned carts into sales by:

• Automating marketing campaigns that recapture your potential customers.
• Focusing on improving the user experience (UX) of your ecommerce site to make shopping easier.
• Solving the common pain points of your potential shoppers.
• Increasing the trust and loyalty of your brand to reduce the number of abandoned carts.

Shopping cart abandonment affects online retailers in virtually all industries, which means that ecommerce marketing experts have tried and tested proven ways to get shoppers to:

• Come back to your website.
• Claim their abandoned shopping carts.
• Spend more money than they initially planned to.

By using the expert sales, marketing, and UX tips below, you can easily reduce the number of abandoned carts your ecommerce business receives and increase your profit.

How To Decrease Your Abandoned Cart Rate

To decrease your abandoned cart rate, we’ll teach you how to:

• Create automated abandoned cart campaigns.
• Make checkout easier by providing multiple payment methods.
• Build shopper trust with transparency.
• Streamline the checkout process by allowing guest checkout.
• Help your shoppers feel safe during the payment step.
• Use trust badges to help shoppers make their final decisions.
• Create a checkout experience that feels fast and easy.
• Leverage powerful calls-to-action (CTAs) to entice checkouts.
• Let shoppers save their carts, with cart reminders.
• Speed up your website for a smooth user experience.

Let’s dive in.

1. Automatically Remind Shoppers To Finish Checkout With Abandoned Cart Campaigns

Shopping cart abandonment isn’t final, as long as you intervene with marketing.

In fact, one report suggests up to 74% of shoppers who abandon carts can be persuaded to purchase with the right communications strategy.

An abandoned cart email or SMS campaign is a proven way to save abandoned carts.

Example Abandoned Cart Campaign Workflow

1. The shopper adds a product to their cart and initiates checkout but doesn’t complete the purchase.
2. You send that shopper an email or text message reminding them to complete the purchase (this often includes adding a discount as an incentive).
3. The shopper is incentivized and reminded to complete their purchase at your online store.

That’s often easier said than done.

So, make sure you have the technical capabilities to track those shopper actions and connect them to your email or SMS software.

You should also test what the right cadence is for sending abandoned cart messages, as well as the right incentive. Free shipping might be more appealing than 10% off, but you can only figure that out with testing.

It’s relatively simple to set up abandoned cart campaigns for known customers who are logged in and on your website.

But, what about guest shoppers or those who haven’t logged into their store accounts?

Thankfully, there are technology solutions that let you send abandoned cart emails to potential shoppers who aren’t in your database.

Yes, you can potentially send an abandoned cart email with a promotion to a guest shopper or even a first-time shopper.

When vetting a provider that makes it possible, make sure you’re looking at:

• Email and privacy compliance: Using a shady provider to save a few sales is not worth getting your emails blacklisted or worse. Make sure any solution you choose is compliant with CAN-SPAM, CCPA, GDPR, and anything else relevant to your business.
• Social proof: Have other brands found success using this type of abandoned cart provider? If brands you know and respect find value in this type of provider, it’s a good sign.
• The business model: A cost-per-action model is an ideal way to approach this type of marketing channel because it means you’ll only pay if it successfully creates sales for your brand.

2. Provide Multiple Payment Methods To Make Checkout Easier

Different online shoppers prefer different payment methods.

If your online store only accepts a limited range of payment options, you could miss out on potential sales when a customer abandons their shopping cart upon learning their preferred payment method isn’t accepted.

Accepting multiple payment options can also reduce friction for customers during the checkout process.

For example, if your online store accepts Apple Pay instead of requiring all guests to provide their credit card details, the process of making a purchase can run much more efficiently than it otherwise might.

3. Be Transparent About Shipping Fees & Taxes

Shopping cart abandonment occurs for many potential reasons. Unexpected shipping costs and high taxes are among the more noteworthy.

63% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts due to expensive shipping costs.

Surprisingly high shipping costs can negatively influence a customer’s desire to make a purchase.

How: Before a customer reaches the final checkout page, be sure to give them a reasonable understanding of what shipping costs and other additional fees will amount to. It may even be wise to offer free shipping in some circumstances.

While free shipping isn’t always a feasible option, offering it for some items could reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate.

4. Offer Guest Checkout To Make Shopping Hassle-Free

Offering guest checkout is among the simplest and most effective ways to decrease cart abandonment during the checkout process.

43% of customers prefer to use guest checkout. In fact, 72% of survey respondents indicated they will typically use guest checkout options even when they have accounts with online stores.

Yes, you ideally want your guests to create accounts with your ecommerce store. This can improve the odds that customers will return in the future.

However, requiring all customers to create accounts can result in a loss of ecommerce sales. Don’t underestimate the potential value of allowing guests to make purchases without setting up accounts.

5. Promise & Promote Fast, Secure Checkout

Your prospective customers may be busy people. You must design the checkout flow accordingly.

Overall, the entire checkout process shouldn’t take more than four minutes.

It should also be secure. If you can instill customer trust, you can reduce shopping cart abandonment rates.

How do you increase customer trust? Keep reading!

6. Use Trust Symbols To Make Your Shopper Feel Safe

Trust symbols are visual elements on checkout pages that immediately signify to customers an ecommerce store will keep their data safe and secure.

Symbols that can boost trust among online customers:

• SSL symbols.
• Security badge symbols.
• Endorsement symbols from third parties, such as the Better Business Bureau.

These are just a few examples of great trust symbols you can include on your website.

The presence of trust symbols can reassure customers throughout the customer journey. These symbols also convey valuable information efficiently, guarding against a long checkout process.

7. Use Progress Bars In The Checkout Process

Customers generally prefer to have a sense of how long the online shopping experience will take when making purchases from ecommerce stores.

If customers don’t know how far along they are at any given stage of the checkout process, they might abandon shopping carts without realizing their purchases are nearly complete.

What To Do: Include progress bars on all checkout pages to help the shopper know how much more time they need to spend in order to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

This is yet another way in which optimizing convenience in checkout flow helps your online business attract more customers.

8. Use Strong, Unique CTAs During Checkout

The right CTA can convince an otherwise hesitant online shopper to add an item to their cart. The same is true for your checkout.

A strong CTA at checkout should have the same tone as those on product pages. They should also usher a shopper through each stage of the checkout process with action-oriented language.

• Stay away from: “Continue” or “Proceed.”
• Try CTAs like: “Keep going! You’re just two steps away from taking advantage of this limited-time offer.”

Test different options to determine which are most effective.

The right CTA will vary depending on the product being sold and the circumstances of the sale.

9. Let Shoppers Save Their Cart For Later – With Checkout Reminders

A shopper might not have time to finish the checkout process right now. However, they may have every intention of completing the purchase later.

Ensure doing so is easy by allowing shoppers to save their carts for later during the checkout process.

Pro Tip: Once the shopper has saved their cart, add them to your automated abandoned cart campaign from tip one.

If a customer can return to their own shopping cart when they have more time for shopping online, shopping cart abandonment will be a less significant cause of lost revenue.

10. Optimize Your Page Load Speed

Slow load times for checkout pages (and all other pages on an ecommerce website) may substantially contribute to a high cart abandonment rate.

Remember, your customers live busy lives. Shoppers may frequently click away before completing their purchases if site speed isn’t optimal.

Make sure that site speed is optimized for all versions of your ecommerce store. This includes your mobile site.

Statistics show that mobile shopping is becoming increasingly popular and may soon overtake desktop online shopping. Many ecommerce stores are optimizing their mobile sites and apps in response to this trend. Yours should as well.

Preventing Shopping Cart Abandonment = More Revenue

Online shopping cart abandonment is a widespread problem for ecommerce sites. That’s not to say it’s a problem you can’t address.

The strategies here will reduce cart abandonment and boost sales. By improving the overall checkout process, minimizing hidden costs, and leveraging thoughtful abandoned cart campaigns, you’ll ensure abandoned shopping carts don’t stand in the way of your success.