Top 8 tips to reduce shopping cart abandonment

Did you know that, according to Optinmonster.com, the average shopping cart abandonment rate in 2019 is 76%? In addition to this piece of information, if you analyze 41 different studies on cart abandonment rate, you’ll see that the lowest rate was over 56%.

If you think about it, the statistics show that if you have 1000 visitors a day, that added products to the shopping carts, over half of them or even 760 of them will leave your site before purchasing the items. That’s a lot!

What do you think, why do users decide to leave the shopping cart?

From our experience, there are the ones that were checking out the products on your site, accidentally clicked on the cart icon and decided to leave so the information about purchase won’t be saved.

There are also the ones that did some comparison-shopping and decided to buy your competitor’s product(s).

Alas, there are the ones that had an unpleasant experience navigating through your site and decided to find some other, similar online store. Perhaps, they got surprised by the shipping costs or didn’t trust your site enough to leave their personal and financial information.

If you have the same problem with the shopping cart abandonment as the e-commerce sites we mentioned, it’s perfect time you do something about it.

So, to help you stop your visitors from waving goodbye as soon as they add products to the cart, we decided to give you 8 tips on how you can reduce shopping cart abandonment. Here they are:

Disclaimer: Themes Kingdom team is not affiliated with any of the mentioned tools in this post nor do we earn a commission if you end up using and/or purchasing any of the tools and plugins through referral links in this blog post. We merely wanted to name some services that can help you reduce shopping cart abandonment.

Build your site visitors’ trust using the SSL encryption

One of the reasons why shoppers decide to close the tab once they have added your products to the cart is that your website doesn’t scream I am trustworthy enough.

If you think about it, you probably won’t leave personal and financial information on a site that doesn’t seem entirely secure.

One of the ways you can boost your site’s security level is by including the SSL (Secure Socket Layer) encryption on your website.

If you’ve read our post on WordPress security tips, you might remember that we mentioned you should use this encryption to protect your admin data and eliminate the warning message users see in their browser, regarding the connection not being secure.

If you want to get an SSL certificate, you can buy one from a third-party company or reach out to your hosting provider. Getting an SSL certificate shouldn’t last more than 15 minutes. Not only will the SSL encryption reduce shopping cart abandonment, but it will also help your website rank higher on Google.

Include multiple payment options

As an online shopper, you probably love having multiple payment options to choose from. Well, guess what? Your site users do too.

When choosing payment options to include in your online store, you need to keep in mind who your target audience (buyer persona) is, that is, what your customer segments are.

Why is this step so essential? On the one hand, if you are selling latest-fashion clothing pieces designed for urban Millennials, you’ll probably include payment options that are quick and safe, like PayPal or e-wallets. On the other hand, if you are selling antique furniture, meant to impress Generation X shoppers, you might want to reconsider including the PayPal option and choosing to add credit as a payment option instead.

So, before you decide on the payment options, analyze your customers’ location, age, income, education level, and discover what devices they use to visit your website. You can even go more in-depth into analyzing your buyer persona, by investigating their lifestyle and habits.

Don’t shock potential buyers with high shipping costs

Imagine the following scenario: a user, we’ll call her Linda, adds crop top shirt, a pair of earrings and boots to her cart, and proceeds to the checkout. She is so excited to buy these pieces, as she has been checking them out frequently waiting for them to be on sale. At the very end of her shopping experience, Linda faces high shipping costs. She, shocked by how high the costs are, immediately closes the tab, leaving the shopping cart abandoned and mad about the fact that she spent so much time checking these clothing pieces and not knowing how much the shipping costs are. She’ll never return to the site again.

To avoid this type of situation, you can do lower shipping costs/offer free shipping, or you can become more transparent about how much the shipping costs are. If you are not in a position to change your delivery costs, we would advise you to choose the second option and include a cost calculator that will appear on product pages. To help you with this step, we would recommend you to use the WooCommerce Calculate Shipping Button plugin. This plugin will allow your customers to calculate shipping costs before they decide to add products to the cart and provide a list of available shipping methods.

Don’t forget to send shopping cart abandonment emails

If you have been a true TK blog reader, you might remember that not so long ago, we wrote about the abandoned cart email trick, emphasizing the importance of such email, and its ability to encourage shoppers to go back to your website and order the product(s).

We still stand by everything we wrote in that post. To remind you about these tips, here are the key takeaways on writing and sending an abandoned cart email:

• Each cart abandonment email should be tailored to the needs of the individual user, and depending on the products users decided to include in the cart and then abandon.
• The email needs to have a compelling subject line that contains a call to action. It can be written in the form of a question (Did you forget something?) or a statement, like Ooops, you forgot something.
• When it comes to the email content, be sure to show users the items they left in the shopping cart. This trick is one of the most effective ways to remind them about what they have missed.
• Include a special offer, coupon code or free shipping, in the email content, to encourage users to return to buy the products they left in the shopping cart.
• Add a button or a linked text at the end of the email, which will lead users to your website (and the abandoned shopping cart). This step is especially important, because, if users have to google your website to get to the abandoned cart, the cart will be abandoned forever.
• Send the email within the next 24 hours. By doing so, you’ll raise the chance of users actually returning to buy products because they remember the products they were looking to buy.

If you need a tool which will automatically send emails to users that decided to abandon the cart, we would advise you to check out the YITH WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart plugin. What we love about this plugin is that it gives you the option to send an email to one user and use bulk actions to send one email to multiple users.

Allow “guest shoppers” to order your products

This tip is here to remind you that users love a quick, intuitive shopping experience that won’t take too much of their spare time.

Let’s imagine that, to get to the checkout page on your site, users must go through four steps. If in the middle of ordering a product, you ask visitors to create accounts (create a username, a password, confirm their email addresses, etc.), chances are most of them won’t make it to the checkout page.

Asking a user to create an account is so 2010. Not to mention, in this day and age, adding unnecessary steps while users shop for the products can be a dealbreaker and even serve them as a motivator for to close the tab and never return to your online store.

To avoid losing shoppers, you all you need to do is log in to your WordPress admin panel, navigate to WooCommerce section, click on Settings, and choose the Checkout option. The last step you should do is check the box Enable guest checkout, and you’re all set 一 no user will have to go through the unnecessary, extra steps.

Include the “Hate to see you go” pop-up

If you have done your research on how to boost sales on an e-commerce website, you have probably come across a well-known, quick trick that promises a lot 一 a popup.

A pop-up is an element which can be added to your website when you want to encourage user interaction. Although these elements are considered to be annoying and even pointless, the truth is that a well-designed pop-up can result in 9,02% conversion rate. But, what’s even more impressive is the fact that exit-intent pop-up (the one that you should use when users decided to abandon the cart) can save up to 35% of the visitors that were planning to leave your website.

When it comes to installing a popup, it can be installed on pretty much any page. To reduce shopping cart abandonment, we would advise you to include it on your checkout page. The popup message itself should be pretty eye-catching if you want to spark interest. The best practice is to offer users a deal, 10% or 15% off the products that are in their shopping carts, so that you can encourage them not to leave again.

If you need help creating these types of pop-ups, we recommend you check out the MailOptin plugin.

Never delete negative product reviews

As Robert Allen, the author of Cracking the Millionaire Code, once said, “There is no failure. Only feedback.” We would advise you to remember this sentence next time you come across a negative product review.

When it comes to bar reviews of your products, there’s only one rule: don’t delete them. According to Review almost 78% of shoppers read online reviews before making a purchase. Also, a study showed that almost the same amount of customers, that is, 82% of them, actively seek out negative reviews. Both of these studies show that having a couple of bad reviews can actually increase your conversion rate.

However, an actual increase in your conversion rate depends on how you handle an unpleasant situation.

When dealing with a negative review, you need to be careful. Since your goal is to turn that negative comment into a positive one, you need to reach out to the unsatisfied customer and offer as much help as you possibly can. Once the rest of the users see how you handled the situation and how proactive you’ve been, they will feel more confident to buy products from you.

Bonus tip: If you don’t have as many reviews as you would like, you can reach out to users and ask them to provide reviews of the products they bought. Just remember not to sound too needy or desperate when you are asking them to do so. Show how appreciative you are and ask them about their shopping experience. If it’s bad, it’s time for you to step up and change the negative experience into a positive one; if it’s a satisfying experience, you might be able to get a positive review of the product.

Identify when users decide to leave your site most commonly

When you are starting to build your e-commerce brand, with the data you have about your potential customers, you can only make assumptions about how users are going to behave once they get to your website. This is the reason why you should try to make the user experience as enjoyable and aesthetically pleasing as you can.

If it has been months since you started building your online store and your shopping cart abandonment rate grows with each day, it’s the time you analyze the reasons behind it, that is, in what moments users decide to leave your website. Luckily for you, to do so, you don’t have to use any third-party tools or plugins. All you need to do is check Google Analytics and its conversion pathways. To check the information on how users navigate on your website, go to the Conversions section, choose Goals and then the option Goal Flow. Once you go deeper into the flow, you’ll be able to discover where “the leak out” is and what you should do to change it.

If you want to know more about pathways, be sure to read Google’s guide to Users Flow report.

Are you ready to boost your sales?

We hope that, after reading these tips, you feel a bit more confident in yourself and the fact that you can, with focus and dedication, manage to reduce shopping cart abandonment.

After all, your e-commerce website is not the first, and it certainly won’t be the last that has come across this issue. Good luck with boosting your sales and be sure to let us know whether these tips helped you reduce shopping cart abandonment.

What tricks do you use to encourage users to complete their orders? Share with us your thoughts, in the comment section down below.