Twelve ways to reduce cart abandonment

Minimising cart abandonment is an ongoing process. Online merchants need to continually review their checkout process to ensure it isn’t too complicated, too long, and that it doesn’t ask for too much unnecessary information from the customer.

In a white paper titled Optimising Online Checkout—20 practical ways to reduce cart abandonment and increase online profits, ecommerce provider Demandware outlines how to go about combating checkout failure. Here are just 12 of those best-practice tips.

1. Offer wish lists and saved carts. Making it easier for customers to come back to your website to complete a purchase at a later date may help reduce cart abandonment. According to Demandware, etailers can encourage repeat visits by allowing customers to save their baskets or create a wish list where cart contents can be saved until the customer is ready to buy.

2. Make gifting easy. Some consumers may abandon their baskets because they are buying for another person but you do not offer adequate gifting options. Adding the choice of gift wrapping, gift messaging, or gift receipt (where the final amount paid isn’t shown on the despatch note), may help.

3. Present total visibility for costs and security early and consistently. It’s commonly accepted that not displaying shipping charges until the final stages of checkout is bad practice. Make sure your customers know how much they’re paying from the start, and take this opportunity to display your security credentials to further reassure customers you are a reputable and trustworthy business.

4. Eliminate the main header from cart. Remove the main navigation banner from the checkout process to reduce potential distractions.

5. Make your return policies clear. According to a recent Forrester report, almost 40 percent of online “nonbuyers” didn’t shop online because they thought returns would be a hassle, claims Demandware. Prove them wrong and reduce customer anxiety: “Your policies may also be an important point of competitive advantage”.

6. Offer guest checkout. “Not everyone wants to be remembered,” writes Demandware. Quoting another Forrester report, Demandware claims that 38 percent of online users do not shop online because they have to register with a site before completing their purchase. It advises giving customers the option of shopping as a guest.  “This is especially important for the privacy-conscious customer. In addition, registered customers that might be having difficulty with their login will still have an opportunity to checkout.”

7. Show contact information. Demandware explains that some etailers experience a high abandonment rate on certain pages of their sites. This is a sure sign of a problem; one solution that can save sales is prominently displaying alternative contact information, such as a customer services telephone number. One more tip here: Have a human being answer the phone—impersonal automated messages will do nothing to placate a frustrated customer.

8. Show a progress bar. “Most customers are impatient,” states the white paper. “Using a progress bar shows them exactly where they are in the checkout process—and how much further they need to go.” What’s more, you can avoid losing your customers on this page by making your calls to action bold so that your customers don’t have to hunt for the “continue” button.

9. Allow for edits. The white paper advises merchants feature a “back” button so that customers can amend their order. Further, “any information entered should be retained so the customer does not need to reenter” after going back a step. To enable the customer to easily edit his basket, place edit links in context—for example, take the user to the product page to change a garment’s size. Don’t make a user click around until he reaches the relevant section.

10. Provide alternative payment methods. Not everyone wants to pay by credit card, offering alternative methods such as PayPal “can increase your opportunity for conversion,” writes Demandware.

11. Provide clear and simple order confirmation. Once your customers have completed checkout, what do they see? Use this opportunity to reengage with them—a special offer on their next purchase or an invitation to complete a survey can encourage repeat visits—“avoid having this page as a dead-end”.

12. Track cart abandonment. According to Demandware, reviewing abandoned carts can unlock valuable information to help you improve the checkout process. By having a cart-abandonment tracking programme in place, online retailers can “identify potential problem areas and opportunities for improvement”.