Abandon shopping cart!

For on-line merchants one of the most useful metrics is shopping cart abandonment rate, the percentage of online visitors who fill a shopping cart, only to abandon it before completing purchase. E-tailers who keep tabs on this metric may be in for a shock. For a number of years abandonment rate dropped, but recently, in what may be a sign of the times, shopping cart abandonment has started to ratchet up again. Analysts believe this reflects the fact that more shoppers use the web for comparison shopping purposes and are opening up, and then abandoning their carts, to go check out the price at other sites.

In a survey of online shopping behaviour by PayPal and comScore almost two-thirds of visitors who put items into shopping carts ended up NOT buying them, primarily for price related reasons. Of these, shipping charges were the number one reason customers gave for not completing their purchase. Fair and justified they may be, but the perception that they make the deal too costly is there, so that perception must be managed. First, offer multiple shipping methods and allow visitors to enter their postal code to get an estimate of what each might cost for their given purchase. This will refocus the decision making on how soon they want it and how much the parcel service will charge them, not how much you’re going to charge them. Alternatively, include shipping in the price and clearly specify that this is the case. If shipping isn’t significant to profit margin then provide it free, or free after a certain purchase value threshold, and advertise the fact.

‘Shipping shock’ isn’t just about amount, it’s also about where in the transaction the visitor becomes aware of it and the same applies to other add-on costs such as taxes. When charges are suddenly added in at the end of a transaction they come as an unpleasant surprise. Show add-on costs such as GST and shipping either in the first step of the checkout process or even in the product description.

Another area where marketing can decrease abandonment is by offering visitors assurance at the right time and place throughout the transaction. Shoppers may have questions about issues you don’t address on the page they are viewing. Don’t lose them because they can’t immediately get an answer. Offer them the option to call customer support, preferably toll free, so it can be sorted out on the spot.

Don’t bury critical information in tiny type at the bottom of the page or on other pages within the website. Product warranty information, return policies, testimonials, even optional extended service plans should be available at the point of action. Adding the policies at the very bottom of the webpage is not effective since you are forcing your visitor to search for it. Place a policy next to the information field where it is most relevant to the visitor, for example, the privacy policy next to where you ask for contact details in the checkout process and the delivery and return policy next to the ‘confirm order’ button. Using pop ups for this information will avoid forcing visitors to click away from their purchase page to read it and possibly not coming back.

Picking up the dropped cart

Many people use shopping carts as place holders for considering items, a sort of wish list or while they do some comparison shopping. It’s a mistake to empty carts the minute they are abandoned. Shoppers may come back, maybe in hours, maybe in weeks. Provide a ‘save cart’ function that will allow them to save their selections for a reasonable period of time and resume their shopping later without having to search out the items again. Provide information about the length of time it will be held and the conditions that apply, such as, that items may become unavailable and prices may alter during the interval.

Even smarter – if they got to the stage of providing their email send them a friendly reminder that they have items waiting in a cart still available on your site. Closer to expiry date send a follow up email, as a ‘courtesy’, to alert them that the cart is about to be removed.

There are signs that the economic slowdown is leading consumers to consider making a larger proportion of their purchases online, so now is a good time to get to know your shopping cart abandonment rate and start implementing marketing tactics to reduce it.