Shopping cart abandonment is the number one enemy of a successful e-commerce store, yet 88% of online transactions will end this way. If you run an online business, it may be frustrating to see customers get all the way to the shopping cart only to be deterred at the last minute. Luckily, there are ways to understand and analyze this behavior and reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates. Here are eight tips to help you beat the bounce.
1. Understand The Consumer Mindset
To understand shopping cart abandonment, you need to adopt the mindset of the consumer. You’re about to buy a product online, and you somehow stumble across another site that advertises the same item at a lower price with cheaper shipping. What are you going to do?
Most likely, you will abandon the first cart and proceed with the more affordable option. Of course, you can gain greater insight into your customers’ behavior by using analytics software, such as Zoho CRM and Intercom, to track their movement on your site.
2. Add Shipping Discounts
A Forester study found that 44% of online shoppers who abandon their carts do so because of shipping and handling costs being higher than they would like. Therefore, ways to reduce your bounce rate might include:
• Reducing shipping costs
• Adding discounts to shipping when customers spend above a certain threshold
• Buy-one-get-one-free promotions
• Time-limited promotions
It’s easy to implement these changes using the Shopify discount code function. You don’t need to be a Shopify expert or have any prior coding knowledge; the platform is simple and intuitive.
“Always deliver more than expected”, Larry Page, co-founder of Google.
3. Add A Shipping Calculator
According to the same study, 41% of customers leave the checkout because they simply aren’t ready to make a purchase. In this case, people end up at the checkout stage because they want to see the total price of products plus shipping so they can shop around for a better deal.
An easy way to win customers is to include a shipping rate calculator in your Shopify Plus theme, so customers have an accurate picture of the price before they get to the checkout stage. You might do this by:
• Choosing a Shopify Plus theme with an inbuilt shipping calculator
• Adding a shipping rate calculator to your existing theme
Of course, this will only work if your shipping rates are competitive, so you will need to research your competitors to find out what they’re charging.
4. Enable Guest Checkout
If you want customers to make a purchase, you need to make the process as quick and easy as possible. Many customers will be put off buying a product if you give them too long to consider it, or else they will grow bored or frustrated with the sign-up process and will navigate off your site.
The best way to get around this issue is to enable guest checkout using just an email address. With Shopify Plus, you can enable guest checkouts by selecting “Accounts are optional” from your customer accounts settings.
5. Speed up transactions
The longer the sales process, the more likely your customers are to abandon their carts. Make transactions quick and simple by using an enterprise platform like Shopify Plus.
With Shopify Plus, your site can process 8000 orders per minute, so the sales opportunities are limitless.
6. Make It Easy To Get In Touch
Some shoppers will inevitably have questions during the checkout process, so make sure you’re there to answer them. While telephone customer service is great, you won’t be able to offer that service around the clock. It’s far better to use an online chat function with seamless Shopify affiliates app integration, such as LiveChat or ChatBot.
If you’re not sure how to integrate apps, a Shopify cheat sheet can help you get set up.
7. Take advantage of FOMO
“Effective marketing leverages FOMO to build excitement and brand loyalty,” Alan Cassinelli, Director of Marketing at Need/Want.
Show how many people are looking at the product and how many have been sold in the last day or hour. You could also show a countdown of a deal or promotion. Adding a countdown clock will also make customers less likely to waste time shopping around. Using scarcity and urgency will increase FOMO – fear of missing out – in consumers and make them more likely to purchase.
8. Use same domain checkout
If your customer reaches the checkout stage, chances are you’ve built up a certain amount of trust in your site. By navigating them to an external domain to make a purchase, you are likely to lose some of that trust and make customers feel uneasy.
Shopify redirect means you’ll keep your domain when you get to checkout without deterring the shopper. The platform includes with fully customizable CSS/SCSS/liquid code capabilities, so you can make your checkout page fit with your site and branding.
Conclusion
High shipping costs are the primary reason for shopping cart abandonment, but there are many other factors at play, such as:
• Transparency about costs and shipping calculations
• Speed of registration process
• Speed of checkout/transaction
• Customer support
• Redirects
Therefore, the best way to reduce your bounce rates is to use an enterprise platform like Shopify Plus that covers all the bases. Plus, with 24/7 support, if you get stuck along the way, you can make use of our expertise, with our experienced team of Shopify experts and Shopify developers available to help your Shopify Plus e-commerce store.
With Shopify Plus, the customer experience will be so seamless that your guests will never want to leave.
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