Dealing with frustration due to a high cart abandonment rate? Wondering how to reduce cart abandonment on your WooCommerce website? Well, you aren’t alone.
Many eCommerce retailers like you face this irritating problem. They spend hours, days, and even months addressing this issue. While some become successful, others fail to reduce cart abandonment.
Nonetheless, you can win this challenge by following our comprehensive guide, packed with practical strategies.
In this guide, we’ll help you comprehend what cart abandonment is. We’ll discuss the most common reasons for cart abandonment. Also, we’ll talk about the practical solutions to eliminate this problem.
Hence, read the blog post and apply these techniques to lessen cart abandonment for your online business.
What is digital shopping cart abandonment?
Image credit: Freepik
Shopping cart abandonment indicates when a customer starts a checkout process for an online order but cancels it before completing the purchase.
Shopping cart abandonment becomes one of the biggest headaches for merchants selling online. When this happens, merchants lose their potential customers. Also, they can’t generate the prospective revenue they target.
Therefore, eCommerce website owners facing this problem look for ways to resolve it. If you can relate to them, continue reading this article to find solutions.
Why do you need to reduce the cart abandonment rate?
Many reasons outline why you need to reduce the cart abandonment rate. Before describing those reasons, let’s define the cart abandonment rate.
The cart abandonment rate refers to the percentage of interested customers who add products to the cart but leave your website without paying.
According to Statista, the online shopping cart abandonment rate has been rising since 2014. In that year, the cart abandonment rate was 68.07%. The following year, it became 68.63% and has continued growing ever since.
Data Source: Statista
For your information, the cart abandonment rate affects the overall conversion rate of an eCommerce store. That means you won’t generate the revenue you want if you can’t reduce it. Even you may face loss in your business.
It’s one of the vital reasons outlining why you need to reduce the cart abandonment rate. Other reasons include the following:
- You’ll count on higher customer acquisition cost
- You’ll lose potential revenue
- You’ll notice a lower conversion rate
- You won’t benefit from upsells
- and so on.
So, to stay ahead of the curve, reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate and increase sales and revenue.
Keep reading this article to know how you can resolve this frustrating issue.
Why do shoppers abandon carts?
Shoppers can abandon carts due to various reasons. For example, they can reject carts after noticing the high shipping fee. Shoppers can also abandon carts if they experience a prolonged or confusing checkout process.
Here’s an image from Baymard Institute giving you a glimpse into the top reasons outlining why customers abandon carts.
Data Source: Baymard Institute
Let’s now briefly discuss the most common reasons for cart abandonment.
1. Mandatory account creation
As an eCommerce website owner, you may want to collect your customers’ data for future marketing purposes. Hence, you make them create accounts on your website before completing the purchase.
Let’s tell you this is one of the most prominent reasons why customers abandon carts. Nobody likes to face hassles while in buying mode.
The more tasks they have to complete to make a purchase. The less likely they’ll be to order something on your website.
Besides, many people don’t want to disclose their personal information, especially when they are first-time buyers.
Consequently, they leave your eCommerce store without buying anything.
2. Confusing checkout process
A long and confusing checkout process can make potential customers abandon their carts. You may know many people are lazy and don’t like to put more effort into purchasing online.
These people will leave your store as soon as they notice they need to complete many steps before placing an order.
Therefore, make the checkout process as smooth as possible. If you don’t know how to do this, you can utilize some plugins offering instant checkout solutions.
3. Payment security concerns
Many careful shoppers abandon carts in WooCommerce stores they don’t trust.
They often discover some eCommerce websites featuring no SSL certificate. Just to let you know, SSL certificate is a vital security measure for any website.
It tells visitors that your website is safe for browsing and making transactions. So, you must have an SSL certificate on your store to build customer trust.
Another factor contributing to making customers hesitant to buy something is an unprofessional website outlook.
It’s quite common that after landing on the website, customers notice the website design is outdated.
As a result, the lack of trust grows, discouraging customers from entering their credit card details.
4. Lack of required payment options
Customers want to experience a smooth and hassle-free shopping journey. They want to make purchases using their preferred transaction methods.
If your WooCommerce store fails to provide this facility, you’ll notice a high cart abandonment rate.
Therefore, make sure to integrate popular payment solutions into your website, such as PayPal, Apple Pay, Stripe, Google Wallet, and other digital wallets.
These payment solutions will enable consumers to purchase their desired products hassle-free. On top of that, these digital wallets will prevent customers from giving their credit card details to retailers.
5. Unanticipated shipping cost
Unanticipated shipping fees are one of the significant reasons for cart abandonment.
Imagine you want to buy a product with a $70 price tag. The moment you visit the checkout page, you see there is an additional shipping fee of $50 tacked on at checkout.
Would you purchase that product? Maybe you won’t.
Many consumers are out there like you. They’ll immediately abandon the cart after noticing a high shipping fee. Indeed, it’s a major turn-off for them.
6. Ambiguous refund policy
The cart abandonment rate drastically increases when customers notice your store has an ambiguous refund policy. You need to build customer trust to reduce cart cancellations and increase sales.
Therefore, create an easy-to-read return and refund policy to ensure your customers. So that they can get a refund or return the item if it has one or more defects afterward.
7. Prolonged delivery time
On-time delivery is a significant concern for shoppers. After purchasing online, they can cancel their orders if they don’t receive their products on time.
Hence, you need to ensure on-time delivery of every product you sell online. Customers will prioritize your store over others if you can achieve this goal.
How to reduce cart abandonment – Follow these proven tactics
You can follow a couple of practical steps to reduce the cart abandonment rate in your store. Here are some cart abandonment reduction strategies you can consider.
I. Improve your mobile checkout experience
Do you know how many mobile phone users are in the US? According to Statista, 310 million people in the US own smartphones.
Undoubtedly, the number of people using mobile phones for shopping is huge, and so are your potential customers. Thus, make your store mobile-friendly to give customers a smooth shopping experience.
You need to work on how the checkout flow functions and looks on a small device. You need to ensure that mobile users complete as few steps as possible to make a purchase.
Pro tip: Avoid including too many steps for users to complete the checkout. Give them a seamless, smooth and fast checkout experience.
II. Reduce complexity and minimize clicks
We’ve already discussed it a little in the section above. You can reduce complexity and minimize clicks on the checkout page. This simple job will help you reduce the cart abandonment rate.
If you don’t know how to optimize the checkout page and make it user-friendly, you may utilize some plugins like Instantio. Why is this tool? Because it allows users to checkout easily.
This plugin offers an instant checkout solution. Instantio enables customers to order products from a single page within 15 to 25 seconds!
Amazingly, this plugin allows them to skip some steps associated with purchasing online. For example, consumers can skip the cart page and visit the checkout page directly!
III. Increase trustworthiness
Customer trust is essential for reducing cart abandonment on your WooCommerce website. You can re-examine your payment security upon noticing unwanted order cancellations.
While inspecting, ensure your technical infrastructure aligns with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) and offers fraud prevention.
Besides this, include payment security symbols and badges on the checkout page. This will help hesitant shoppers remedy their concerns.
You can also use social proof to gain customer trust. You can display customer reviews, product ratings and user-generated content on your WooCommerce website.
All these will help you establish your store as a brand and motivate customers to convert.
IV. Integrate a variety of payment solutions
Many customers today seek multiple payment solutions whenever they land on any online store. They prefer spending money using their desired payment gateways.
Thus, you’ll notice a high cart abandonment rate if your store fails to provide customers with various payment solutions.
We recommend integrating popular payment gateways into your store to allow shoppers to choose their preferred payment methods.
You can include digital wallets like PayPal, Venmo, Shop Pay, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Samsung Pay. These wallets allow shoppers to purchase your products easily without entering credit card details.
You can also integrate a cryptocurrency payment gateway into your WooCommerce website. For your information, it’s also a popular payment solution that many customers frequently use.
Lastly, you can introduce the BNPL (Buy Now, Pay Later) service on your website. By adding this option to your WooCommerce website, you’ll spark potential customers’ desire to purchase.
V. Clarify the shipping cost early
Many shoppers abandon carts after noticing additional shipping fees when fulfilling orders. Although including the shipping cost on the checkout page might seem tempting, it’s not a best practice.
So, clarify the shipping fees upfront before customers visit the checkout page. You can add a widget to your WooCommerce website asking for shoppers’ locations. Plus, this widget displays them the exact shipping fee when they add an item to the cart.
Alongside this, you can publish your return and exchange policy pages. As a result, shoppers know everything about the return or exchange policy before making any purchase.
Pro tip: You may offer free shipping and include a full refund with a free shipping policy on your store to reduce cart abandonment.
VI. Offer live chat support
Live chat is an excellent way to reduce cart abandonment on your WooCommerce website. You can utilize live chat to assist customers with orders and offer unparalleled customer support.
For instance, you or an agent on your behalf can answer customers’ queries about the product. As a result, customers will stay in touch and will be less likely to abandon carts.
You can install the LiveChat plugin in your WooCommerce store to connect with your customers and give them the necessary support. This revolutionary WordPress chat plugin lets you chat with customers and send personalized messages.
Furthermore, it enables you to use this widget as a contact form for offline messages. LiveChat can even let your customers join your mailing list. Hence, install it and take advantage.
VII. Follow-up with abandoner
You can still notice cart abandonment in your store even after applying the above-mentioned strategies. It can happen due to various reasons.
For example, your customers may abandon carts due to distractions, or they may pay attention to other events/urgencies. In this case, you can follow up with those cart abandoners and remind them of the products they didn’t purchase.
You can retarget those potential customers through paid advertisements like Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, or Pinterest ads. To do this, you need to know about paid advertising.
You can read our guide on how to retarget cart abandoners with paid advertisements. Lastly, you can also utilize email marketing to bring back those customers to your store.
VIII. Avoid inserting extra links
You need to avoid inserting links that make your customers move away from the shopping cart. Customers may intentionally or unintentionally leave the cart, but don’t make this task easy for them!
Many eCommerce retailers prefer upselling related products. Therefore, they often place extra links on the product pages. Consequently, many customers explore those products and never return to the shopping cart.
Pro tip: try to insert links to similar products if you can’t avoid placing extra links.
IX. Create highly convertible product pages
Creating highly convertible product pages is crucial for reducing the cart abandonment rate. Try to develop clutter-free and polished product pages covering all the information of products.
Additionally, try to include high-quality and interactive product images and videos. This will help you fight the high cart abandonment rate.
X. Prominently show business information
As you know, online shoppers are smart and skeptical as well. They may immediately abandon the cart when they can’t easily notice your business information.
Hence, you can add your business information, including brand name, address and contact details, to the footer section of your website to enhance customers’ trustworthiness.
It’s just one way to assure your customers that you’re a legit and reliable business.
XI. Make the cart user-friendly
Not having a user-friendly cart widget on your store can accelerate the cart abandonment rate. Your cart should be easy to use.
You need to make sure that users can effortlessly edit, delete, or change quantities of their products. Ensure you don’t include cryptic buttons that accidentally remove all the items in the cart.
XII. Put testimonials everywhere
Many eCommerce retailers add testimonials only to some specific pages. We recommend you put testimonials everywhere, especially on the checkout page.
Not to mention, a simple sidebar with customer recommendations will keep your potential customers motivated to check out.
XIII. Personally review the checkout system
It’ll be better if you’ve first-hand checkout experience with your store. If you do, you can easily determine why your website’s cart abandonment rate is so high. You’ll know what customers are experiencing while purchasing any items in your store.
Therefore, take the time to review the entire checkout process personally. As you continue inspecting the process, you’ll refine the checkout system. Plus, you’ll eliminate all the problems responsible for cart abandonment.
XIV. Watch out for coupon codes
Indeed, coupon codes are excellent elements in helping you increase sales. But you need to remember that these are a double-edged sword.
How? Well, these codes motivate customers to buy products. On the contrary, coupon codes can prevent customers from completing the transaction.
For example, if customers don’t have an appealing coupon code, they can leave your store searching for it and may never return!
XV. Employ exit-intent pop-up
An exit-intent pop-up can help you reduce cart abandonment on your WooCommerce website. This pop-up resists users from leaving your website and convinces them to stay.
For your information, the exit-intent pop-up tracks the movement of the customer’s mouse. It displays relevant messages when the mouse cursor leaves the targeted area of the browser.
You can customize messages based on customer types or the webpage they’re visiting. For example, you can offer discounts or coupon codes utilizing the exit-intent pop-up and convince customers to close the deal.
XVI. Work on your website speed
Slow webpage loading is a demotivational factor for customers planning to buy products in your store. When this incident occurs at the time of purchasing, you’ll notice a high cart renouncement rate on your website.
Thus, make sure you optimize your website to load faster. You can apply various site speed optimization techniques to make your store run faster and more smoothly.
XVII. Install an SSL certificate.
The last strategy to reduce cart abandonment is to install an SSL certificate on your website (if you don’t have one).
As you may know, SSL is a vital security measure for any website. Having proper security measures in your store will help you build customer trust.
It makes customers feel secure by assuring them that they are visiting a reliable store. If your website lacks SSL, you’ll hardly convince customers to complete the transaction.
Besides all these, the SSL certificate is an essential Google ranking factor. So, ensure you have one installed in your store.
FAQs
What percentage of carts are abandoned?
According to different eCommerce studies, the percentage of cart abandonment swings between 68.81% and 74.52%.
Why is shopping cart abandonment so common for online retailers?
It’s because many users visit stores for browsing purposes. While browsing, they may like some products and add those to the cart. But later, they forget to buy. Other than this, some people abandon carts due to high shipping costs or other factors.
What is a good abandoned cart recovery rate?
The standard abandoned cart recovery rate is 10%. If you have already achieved this percentage, you’re doing a great job!
Rounding up
By now, you have a thorough understanding of how to reduce cart abandonment on your WooCommerce website. All the strategies you’ve read in this article are incredibly effective.
By implementing these techniques, you can drastically reduce cart abandonment in your store and increase sales. We hope this guide will benefit you in the long run and make your eCommerce journey more exciting and hassle-free.
Last but not least, we’ll motivate you to use a cart abandonment recovery plugin to make things easier, simpler, and more efficient.
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