Table of Contents
1) Introduction
There is a very interesting activity on e-commerce websites that we call “cart abandonment”. It means a user added a product to their virtual cart, but then abandoned the site without a purchase. It is a very strange thing, as we know it had the potential to make an actual purchase, but somehow the commitment dropped.
Since session recording software is on the market, and there is more qualitative and quantitative research to find out the motivation behind this act, we are now aware of what causes this act and how to decrease its volume.
In this article, we’ll explore the main causes of cart abandonment and explain how e-commerce businesses can reduce it.
2) How regularly does it happen?
The main thing is, you can’t really stop cart abandonment. You can decrease its effect, but stopping is not an available option. However, you don’t need to be afraid of a small amount. It is like participating in an election but getting only 80% of the votes, and not 100%. In this case, 100 would be more concerning for the citizens, as it would be caused by fraud. You can’t really win the sympathy of every person; therefore, a website structure doesn’t win everybody’s sympathy as well.
Cart abandonment is common in e-commerce, but the rate varies significantly across industries, devices, and shopping behaviors. Baymard Institute’s compilation of 50 studies reports an average abandonment rate of 70.22%. That’s why, before starting to worry about looking for external statistics to certify your beliefs.
Also, add GA4 and session recording software to your site to have a large data set, and have an opportunity to make both quantitative and qualitative research about your own data.
3) What you can’t improve?
Before jumping into those factors that you can actually repair and fix, it is important to understand that certain conditions lead to a worse cart abandonment rate, and you can’t avoid that from happening.
As we mentioned, price is an important factor in this case. If you have high-end products or services, price sensitivity more often occurs. That means, users are not making routine deals, rather thinking days, or weeks whether they really need that product, or not. It’s a common activity that they actually put the desired product in the cart, just to find it later, or just to feel as if it’s almost theirs, but later on they refuse to buy the product. This can be due to an external factor, like they don’t have enough money, or they refuse to do it because of external pressure.
But it can also be because of an internal factor, as they changed their minds during their thought process. There are some other cart abandonment factors that are not on you: if you are just a distributor of a low-quality product, or the product is currently unavailable to order. In the next chapters of the article, we will mention factors that you can actually improve.
4) What can you actually improve?
In this part of the article, we will introduce what are the strongest solutions on decreasing cart abandonment.
a) Decreasing uncertainty
Most of the time, the main reason why users don’t purchase the product is that they are uncertain about the seller. They found a site that offers great prices, but after a long thinking process, they would rather buy the product on another site, potentially even at a higher price.
If you are noticing that session durations and engaged session times are great on your site, and in the session recordings you end up finding out that your users are always searching for something, the general task is to increase trust around your brand and website. Earn certifications that you can display on your website, or put your current ratings on price comparison sites, or from Google Business.
Also, feature comments about your past buyers, highlighting how satisfied they were with your service. On top of that, choose a domain that fits your business. Much research shows that a quality domain name can actually decrease uncertainty.
b) Create an easier funnel
That issue pops up when your end-funnel tasks are too complex or long. Some sites may require signing in to make a purchase, or ask for too much unnecessary data.
Use your analytics data to identify where shoppers drop out of the purchasing process. If a particular checkout step has an unusually high abandonment rate compared with your historical performance or an appropriate benchmark, investigate whether the form, instructions, or available options are creating unnecessary friction.
Here, the best way to decrease its effect is to rethink every possible step. Always strive for a quick purchase route, and remember: customers are not there to give you a favour. They just have a problem, and they want to fix it as soon as possible. Your task is to offer a fast problem-solving route, not to cause frustration and anger.
c) Be aware of technical bottlenecks
This is the most frustrating one. Your task is to gain more purchases, and you are the one who makes it impossible to do so. Sometimes, even a small code change can introduce an error that prevents a page from loading correctly. Or an online purchase method is wired in the wrong manner, and makes it impossible to end the purchasing journey.
That’s why it is important to let users make contact with you by phone or message. Believe me, they quickly find out the problem and report it to your data analytics software.
Also, monitor your results as well. If there’s a big drop between last week’s result and this week’s, always make a complete analysis of your site. Test to detect bugs, and fix them before you even lose your loyal buyers.
5) Conclusion
In this article, we introduced checkout frictions. How cart abandonments happen, which forms you can actually improve, and which forms are rather a symptom of your industry or price strategy.
We also introduced 3 forms of issues that you can actually repair. We showed how you can pinpoint them, and make actions before the escalation. This way, it was just a good lesson, not the end of the journey.
