Cart abandonment rates are a serious pain point that affects eTailers daily. While brick-and-mortar retailers have a much lower abandonment rate, e-commerce platforms will typically see this rate at a higher rate. For retailers who have recently pivoted online due to Stage Four restrictions, or those who wish to reduce abandonment rates in general, here are five tips that are often overlooked, but may help reduce those pesky abandonment rates.

Fast Facts

• The average online cart abandonment rate sits at 69.57 percent
• Mobile cart abandonment rate is even higher, with an average of 85.85 percent
• Checkout optimisation can reduce cart abandonment rates by 35.62 percent

Set Up Automated Email Campaigns

“If you don’t have an automated email campaign set up that’s automatically triggered by an abandoned cart event, then you’re missing out on potential sales. All too often consumers will add items to their cart but don’t proceed to the checkout because they’re not 100% sold on the product, they still want to compare pricing against your competitors, they simply forgot to complete the purchase or they’re hoping you’ll offer them a discount. By having an automated email campaign set up, you can take the guesswork out of knowing whether or not this was a potential sale. You can set the email flows up to educate the customer, entice them with a special offer and emphasize the benefits of your products.”- Emily Amor, SEO Strategist at Digital Darts.

 

Keep All Costs Accurate and Updated

“If you haven’t already clearly display all accurate costs that being the RRP total and delivery costs. Don’t over-complicate how you calculate the delivery cost and speed. Clearly state, for example – Order before 2:00 PM, received the order in three days time, Aus shipping cost $10.” – Carley Johnson, Founder and Growth Specialist at Unzipped.

 

Reduce Page Loading Time

For every one second delay, e-commerce conversion rates drop seven percent. Even the most patient shoppers will leave a website page if the site takes too long to load, so ensuring you have a fast loading page is crucial to reduce cart abandonment rates. Some technical elements can be optimised to reduce the load time, including social media buttons, poorly implemented tags and other plugins can slow down the load time.

 

Enable Guest Checkouts

A core reason why many potential customers abandon a checkout is the lack of ability to checkout as a guest. According to a survey from SaleCycle, 23 percent of shoppers abandoned a site because they had to create an account to complete the purchase. This is an easier way of checking out for mobile shoppers too, as the extra fields can be hard to spot hen scrolling on a smaller screen.

Of course, having a shopper create an account is great for repeat shoppers, so it’s understandable why this is an option that many retailers will try to avoid. Having customers signing into an account is a crucial element for your conversion rate. However, to combat this, you can let the customer create an account after they’ve purchased the product.

 

Offer Multiple Payment Options

2019 was the year of BNPL, and the trend hasn’t slipped away. Offering multiple payment options and flexible plans can help reduce the cart abandonment rate for your platform. In the inaugural Trajectory report form Power Retail, 14 percent of online purchases in the week of August 8th was made with a BNPL platform, such as Afterpay or Klarna. Thirty-six percent of shoppers opted to use PayPal, and 21 percent used debit cards.

Offering multiple payment options minimises a reason why customers would abandon their purchase and go somewhere else. Introduce flexible payment plans such as BNPL, mobile payment platforms like Apple Pay or Google Wallet, and ensure there are core payment platforms such as PayPal.

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