Shopping cart abandonment and tips to avoid it

Just a quick blog here. If I get too excited or drift, I’ll be writing for 2 days.

Shopping cart abandonment is huge.

And it is huge for two reasons.

The first is that a staggering 75% of users purportedly bail from the checkout at some stage of the process.

The last time I wrote about this it was 48%.

This means that the new numbers are wrong, users are getting wiser or cart checkouts are getting worse.

I suspect a little from corner A and B though even if it is 60% abandoning carts, this is still huge.

The second reason this number is huge is because the shopping cart process is so fixable.

The customer relented to your sales pitch and decided to purchase the handbag from your website, added the product to the cart and committed (by-in-large) to buying.

Yet at some stage or another, 75% of these customers walked away. Annoyed, tired and of course, possibly with a declined credit card.

In optimising your cart and checkout process, my view is that there are a couple rules to abide by. Note this is a very short and simple list and certainly doesn't reflect the sort of fine-tuning you should be doing when you get a handle on things.

Keep the checkout as short as possible.

For every click, you lose users. Look at any Google Funnel and it will reaffirm this.

The Google Funnel shown below has a step called ‘Checkout Confirmation’ where 30% of users bail on that completely unnecessary page. Why does the user have to confirm all the details they only 60 seconds ago were entering? Unless the user is Schizophrenic, they don’t need to confirm. Integrate the confirmation into the design and content of your page.

Indeed, only 20% of people made it past the Login page as shown on the Google Funnel below. You know what I'd do? I'd work out how to get rid of that page and certainly the sales-killing confirmation page. 

I'd work it out pretty quick too.

 

 

Only ask the bare details you need to deliver the product

Who on earth has the invoice sent to a different address than the product?

Would you prefer the sale, or fewer customers telling you where they heard of you?

Keep is simple. Sell the product, get the data from the user once they’re a happy customer.

Know your pain points

Firstly, you really should consider FREE delivery. You will see a massive increase in sales.

Massive.

Secondly, know the pain points of your customers which will be:

·         Trust – security and so forth.

·         Delivery – when and for how much.

·         Quality – reaffirm it is a great product and the right product.

·         Customer Service – we’ll swap it, love you and answer your quickly.

So the real reason for this blog was simply to highlight a great info-graphic on shopping cart abandonment I found.

I don’t quite agree with everything, though it is a good summary.

Small version below and the link here. (And get onto optimising your cart and checkout process. You'll increase sales immediately and for FREE!)