3 Simple Tips To Obliterate Shopping Cart Abandonment
You don’t have to lose so many sales on your ecommerce store.
You focus so much energy on creating persuasive landing pages, email marketing, and the wording of your sales page. You’ve got a great product and lots of engaged followers. But somehow you’re still losing a ton of sales.
According to the Baymard Institute, an estimated 70% of online consumers leave filled shopping carts. There are a number of reasons why this happens, including a large percentage that has no intention of actually buying anything at that time. They may be doing a little product research, checking prices or simply window shopping.
To help close these sales, it’s essential to have an overall shopping cart abandonment strategy.
These three tips will help you re-capture lost shoppers and increase sales.
What About a “Gentle Reminder”?
The first step towards grabbing lost sales is to install a shopping cart plan. This is a system that sends gentle reminder emails to any customer that has clicked away from your shopping cart. The eCommerce platform Selz has an Abandoned Shopping Cart app that handles this process for its sellers. Selz stores can be embedded anywhere on a WordPress site, and it’s only $4.99 per month.
Another option is using your email list provider to create custom abandon shopping cart messages. MailChimp has a program called MageMonkey, which can be used with the eCommerce platform Magento. It’s a little more complex to set up than the Selz app, but it’s an effective system. The MageMonkey app is free, and MailChimp is $25.00 per month, plus a $199.00 Pro subscription.
Just Make Things Easier
One common consumer complaint is a lengthy shopping cart process. It’s no wonder that consumers now expect easy, fast checkouts with Amazon’s 1-Click ordering system. Obviously not every eCommerce system can have a 1-Click option, but the goal is to have a streamlined, simple process.
Ecwid offers a few different options, depending on the what the customer wants. They can choose the Express Checkout, choose to login as a new or returning customer, or simply checkout using PayPal. The Express Checkout option gives shoppers the fastest checkout possible. While it doesn’t allow the seller to follow up with email (since there is no email collected), it does offer an alternative option for those who want the convenience of a 1-click type process.
One of the biggest eCommerce mistakes is to have a complicated checkout process. Anything that’s confusing or jumps from screen to screen will turn consumers off.
Go through your entire sales process yourself. Actually buy a product from your site.
Analyze the process from the consumers point of view:
- Is it confusing?
- How long does it take?
- Is the entire checkout process done on the same site?
- Is it mobile friendly?
If you’re not happy with the process, it’s time to find another eCommerce system.
Note: PinnacleCart also has their own built-in cart abandonment solution called Drift Marketing wherein you can customize the email and set a timeframe on when it should be sent such as immediate, after 15 minutes or 48 hours and the like.
Create Trust
A whopping 70% of online consumers cancelled their order simply because they didn’t “trust” the sales process!
Consumers hear about scams and fraud all the time, so it’s no wonder that they want some type of verification that the site they’re buying from is legitimate.
Additionally, 79% of shoppers expect to see some sort of trust icon on eCommerce sites. This is particularly important for smaller eStores without huge brand recognition.
There are several trust icons or trust seals that can be added to your eCommerce site, including:
Additionally, Google offers eCommerce sites the opportunity to become a Google Trusted Seller. You have to apply to become an approved site, but there are several benefits including free order protection for purchases up to $1000.
Another option is to go directly to your eCommerce provider and ask if they offer some type of trust icon.
Send Owl, a digital eCommerce system that works with WordPress, has an added feature that allows sellers to add trust icons to their payment pages. This simple addition reassures consumers that the site they are buying from is safe and trustworthy.
Don’t Give Them Any Reason to Leave
Sometimes you can’t control shopper’s buying habits. They may simply leave a shopping cart in the middle of a sale. Perhaps they’re just not ready.
Whatever their motivation for thinking about leaving, you don’t want to give them any additional reason to click away from your site.
Don’t just focus on the marketing portion of your sales process. No sale is complete until the “Buy Now” button is submitted. Until cash has actually changed hands, the entire sale is up in the air.
Take a look at your entire shopping experience, from start to finish. Don’t overlook this essential step as inconsequential. With the right system in place, you’ll stop letting consumers slip through your fingers and finally start closing more sales.
About the Author Leisha Petrovich
Liesha Petrovich is the creator of Micro Business Essentials, a blog dedicated to helping the smallest businesses make more money. In her free time, she’s working on a Doctorate in Entrepreneurship. You can join her free Plus Ten plan to learn how to make an extra $10K next year.
