5 Tips: How to Avoid Shopping Cart Abandonment

Imagine 100 customers are shopping on your site, eagerly selecting items and placing them in their virtual shopping carts. Now, imagine only 30 of those shoppers actually make it through the checkout process. 

What happened? Where did the other 70 disappear to? 

It’s simple: They abandoned their carts. 

According to the Baymard Institute, nearly 70% of online shoppers abandon their carts before making a purchase. That’s an alarming rate. And it’s costing ecommerce brands serious money — trillions worth of merchandise is abandoned in online shopping carts each year, costing online sellers billions in revenue.

So, what about those 70 shoppers who abandoned their shopping carts on your site? Can you get them to come back? Can you get a bigger portion of your next 100 visitors to pay for the merchandise they’ve selected?

Yes and yes. You can take steps to re-engage prospects who’ve abandoned their carts, as well as to reduce your site’s abandonment rate for the future. Check out these 5 tips on how to avoid shopping cart abandonment.

1. Offer free or discounted shipping

About 49% of consumers say that extra costs at checkout are way too high. These costs can be related to shipping rates, taxes and other fees. When these costs are too high or not communicated earlier in the shopping experience, it can cause prospective buyers to abandon their carts. 

What can you do about these costs? About 67% of U.S. consumers expected free shipping during COVID-19 to offset slower shipping times, and 56% of Americans now expect online retailers to offer free shipping indefinitely. By offering free shipping, you have a higher chance of boosting your conversion rate. If you can’t offer free shipping, even a discount helps.

2. Be upfront about shipping costs

If discounted or free shipping is not feasible for your business, that’s OK. Just make sure you communicate that early in the process. Being transparent with your customers about shipping costs reduces the shock when they get to checkout — and reduces the amount of abandoned shopping carts. 

Make your buyers feel more comfortable by calculating costs before they head to checkout. This will boost customers’ collective confidence when shopping, and the transparency will generate trust and goodwill. 

3. Optimize the checkout process

Optimizing the checkout process could make the difference between customers checking out and abandoning their carts. 24% of consumers say they will abandon their cart if they have to create an account at checkout. Another 18% said that a long or complicated checkout process will inspire them to abandon their carts.

It’s more important than ever to update your company’s checkout process. Allow customers to check out as guests instead of forcing them to create an account. Asking customers to take extra steps that they see as unnecessary will spike your abandonment rate. 

4. Take advantage of cart-recovery emails

Cart recovery emails are one of the most effective ways to boost your conversion rate. These recovery emails get about a 45% open rate and a 21% click-through rate. Of the 21% who click-through to your site, half of them will make a purchase. Adding additional incentives like coupon codes or free shipping will further boost your sales while decreasing your abandonment rate. 

5. Create a seamless mobile experience

More than 85% of mobile shoppers abandon their carts due to a poor user interface, which is why it’s more important than ever to optimize your ecommerce mobile site. 

Optimization tactics could include improving site speed and trimming/tailoring messaging to perfectly fit smaller mobile screens. Mobile users want to be able to navigate your site quickly and easily. Let them do so by optimizing the mobile experience.

Reduce Cart Abandonment With ShipEngine

ShipEngine helps you create the transparency and shipping options that keep buyers on the path toward making purchases. You can use ShipEngine to build rate calculations into your checkout process. When you use ShipEngine’s pre-negotiated rates with the USPS, UPS and others, you can make discounted rates available to your shoppers. After a purchase, use ShipEngine to send your buyers branded tracking alerts. You can even use ShipEngine to add your logo to shipping labels.

Wondering how to avoid shopping cart abandonment? Know that you definitely can make more sales and capture more revenue — and know that we can help. Signup for a ShipEngine account to start exploring, or contact one of our shipping experts to discuss your company’s unique needs.