Over 3/4 of shoppers abandon their cart and leave your site without making a purchase. You know all about the recurring nightmare that is cart abandonment, but you might not have known it was that high.
If you could motivate even a fraction of those shoppers to click buy, you’d be laughing. Thankfully, there are many proven tactics for reducing cart abandonment.
We’ve gone through all the best strategies and guides for turning your visitors into customers and come up with six sure-fire ways to encourage your customers to complete their purchases.
I’ve abandoned my cart! I’ve abandoned my order! pic.twitter.com/ii0NlJYTQ4
— TGB (@twitersbadboy) January 14, 2021
1. Provide Coupon Codes
When you buy most things online, you’ll see there’s a field for you to put coupon codes in. What do you do when you see it? Open a new tab and then start Googling for coupons. If a customer can’t find coupons, they’ll get discouraged as there must be coupons, otherwise you wouldn’t have the field for them, right?
You can ensure they go through with the purchase by adding coupon codes directly to the site. You can advertise different coupon codes, such as a ‘SUMMER20’ offer for 20% off in the summer. Some sites also have a ‘find an offer’ link, where they can find a useful coupon code directly on the site itself.
Whatever offer you decide to create, make sure you advertise it. This could be done through a newsletter sign-up pop-up or via social media. If you have a coupon that anyone can use, let your customers know about it.
2. Offer Free Shipping
Free shipping is one of the most important things that shoppers are looking for, when shopping online. In fact, around 77% of shoppers asked say it’s the most important thing they want in the shopping experience. If a shopper gets to checkout and sees how much shipping adds to their total, they may think twice about buying.
‘Adding free shipping is a powerful way to overcome cart abandonment’ says Darnell Amos, a content writer at PhDKingdom and Write My X. ‘The customer feels they’re getting a better deal, and they’ll actually spend more in order to reach the free shipping threshold.’
3. Allow Guest Checkouts
In theory, it’s always better for a customer to create an account with you. They’ll get a personalized experience and fast checkout, while you’ll get customer data and more direct relationships. However, not everyone wants to sign up for an account, and so they’ll abandon the cart as soon as they’re asked to.
You can easily avoid this by providing guest checkout. You can improve conversions by up to 45% by doing this, so it’s something you should consider.
4. Make Checking Out Simple and Clear
‘Many customers will abandon the cart if they feel it’s too complicated to check out’ says Jess McDermott, a tech blogger at Australia 2 Write and Brit Student. ‘If you can make the process clearer, they’re much more likely to complete the process.’
Reduce the amount of steps it takes to check out, and make it as easy as possible. Have calls to action that show where the customer needs to go next. Also, adding a back and edit button will stop people leaving altogether.
5. Display Security Information
Today’s online shoppers are savvier than ever before, and they don’t want to shop anywhere they don’t entirely trust. That means that you’ll have to be clear about the security you offer, in order to keep that shopper on your site.
Make sure you’re clearly displaying security logos on each page of the check out process, such as SSL certificates and trust seals. You’re much more likely to have customers complete their purchase with these.
6. Offer Live Chat
In store, if a customer has a question they can go to the staff and ask. Online, they don’t normally have that option. Because of this, if they’re not sure of something, they’re going to abandon their cart.
If they have access to live chat though, they’re much more likely to stick around and complete their purchase. If you provide live chat, they can connect to a sales rep and get that same personable experience that they’d get in store. This is something you want to consider implementing, if you haven’t already.
Wrapping Up
Cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating things to deal with when you’re trying to increase sales. As you can see though, there are plenty of simple ways you can increase sales and stop those shoppers leaving before they buy. All you have to do is make that buying process easier for them. Try them out and see just how much of a difference they make to your sales.
For more on cart abandonment, check out an earlier post on cart abandonment recovery strategies.
Kendra Beckley is a business development manager and editor for Coursework writing services and Academic paper help. In her work, she helps companies enter new markets, and create new relationships with potential business partners. She also writes articles on various topics for Next Coursework.