How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment in 2020: 5 Strategies That Can Help

Going to a supermarket, collecting all the required items in the shopping cart but forgetting to buy those items due to a distraction is a type of scenario that happens extremely rarely in offline shopping. However, this type of scenario is normal in the case of online shopping. Unlike offline shopping, people often add items to the cart but do not buy them while shopping online. This phenomenon is called shopping cart abandonment, and it has become a major concern for all e-commerce sites. According to Barilliance, the global cart abandonment rate of 2019 stood at 77.73%, which means that only 22.27% are purchasing the items added to their online shopping carts.

E-commerce sites need to overcome this issue to ensure a stable stream of revenue. Cart abandonment can seriously affect the growth of e-commerce sites and their future expansion plans. To avoid it from happening with your site you should try to minimize distractions on your site and follow a few other strategies that can help bring back the users who abandoned their carts. How to do that? That is precisely what we are going to discuss in this article. Let us look at some of the best e-Commerce shopping cart abandonment strategies that can help you ensure a low cart abandonment rate in 2020:

Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment in 2020

Reducing shopping cart abandonment is not very difficult. You just need to follow the right advice and strategies. Here are some of the best ways you can reduce your shopping cart abandonment in 2020:

#1. Use Exit-Intent Popups

Exit-intent popups can be of great help to increase the conversion rate of customers who are about to leave your e-commerce site. In case you do not know, cconversion rate means the percentage of your visitors who turn into customers. Exit-intent popups are popup messages that can be used by you to show some great deals, offers or information about your products to the customer right now when he/she is about to leave. You can install these pop ups on the checkout page or the shopping cart page to ensure that a visitor is encouraged to make the purchase before leaving your site. This is arguably the best shopping cart abandonment strategy in 2020, which is why we are including it on the top.

#2. Inform Upfront About the Shipping Cost

Customers usually do not mind getting charged with a shipping cost, but if this cost comes as a surprise on the checkout page, it may change the customer’s willingness to buy that product. No one loves such rude surprises, and it is a known fact. According to the Baymard Institute, an average 50% of customers abandon their carts due to the hidden shipping charges. Sometimes, e-commerce sites have other hidden charges, such as taxes and fees.

To avoid this, you must ensure that all the charges are shown on the product page itself. This way the customer can get a clear picture of the amount they are going to pay for a particular product. As a result, they can make their purchase decision before adding the items into the cart. Shipping charges differ for different places, so you must add a calculator plugin in your e-commerce site that can help calculate the actual cost just by simply pressing a button.

#3. Allowing Guest Checkouts

Another solid e-commerce shopping cart abandonment strategy is to allow guest checkout. Customers often bounce from sites that did not allow them to purchase without registering. Registration takes time, and nowadays customers do not want to spend a lot of time just to buy a product. According to the Baymard Institute, almost 28% of customers abandon their carts due to this reason.

The best way to tackle this issue is by allowing guest checkouts on your site. With guest checkouts, customers can make a purchase without getting into all that registration stuff. As far as retargeting them with offers in future is concerned, you can still do that with help of phone number or email they submitted in the checkout form. Customers will no longer spend a lot of time while buying a product from your e-commerce site, and this will also restrict the customer’s shift from your site to another site.

#4. Security

Customers know with the rise of online shopping cybercrime are also increasing. Many people are using unauthorized sites to scam people and cheat them. So, when a customer intends to make a purchase from a new site, he/she wants to feel secure. (S)he always searches for some security labels on the site, popularly known as Trust seals in our language. Trust seals like the ones shown above give the user a feeling that the site is secure and can be trusted. To win the customer’s trust and prevent cart abandonment, you must include such Trust seals on your checkout page and in the footer of your site.

A “Not Secure” label shown before the URL of the e-commerce site can also turn off a user. In fact, it can be the biggest turn off, making people run away from your site. That label is shown when your site is not protected with an SSL certificate. To avoid this, you must acquire SSL certificates and install them on your server. A site with this certificate does not show theat dreaded ‘Not Secure’ label. If you have for example, multiple subdomains then, you should go with wildcard SSL certificate.

#5. Multiple payment options

Nowadays a large variety of payment options have been introduced in the market. All options are introduced with the sole motive of making online payments easy. Customers expect to see multiple payment options in the e-commerce site so that they can get to choose the one they are comfortable with. According to ComScore, almost 56% of customers expect to see a variety in the payment options. A lack of payment options in the e-commerce site can lead to cart abandonment by the customers.

You must provide various payment options like Credit Card, Debit Card, Wallets, PayPal etc. on your e-commerce site. If your customers get the payment method of their choice they will complete the purchase.

Conclusion

Cart abandonment has become a significant issue that e-commerce sites are facing. However, it is not difficult to keep it in check. All you need to adopt the points of above given shopping cart abandonment strategy. When you do that, your cart abandonment rate will come down significantly. If you know any other tips that can be included in this strategy, share them in the comments and keep selling!