The truth is if you are an e-shop owner you lose a huge number of sales due to abandoned carts. In this article we will discuss some reasons for this happening, we will have a look at some statistics, and we will give you several tips on how to lessen the risk of having abandoned carts in general.
There are literally hundreds of studies concerning the phenomenon of abandoned cart. Some say that the amount of abandoned carts can reach up to 80 %, others say it is 55 %. The truth is that such studies tend to be always misleading and that there is a need of observing this from many different points of views. Abandoned cart rate differs based on what industry your e-shop operates in as well as what devices your customers use in order to reach your website.
In other words, up to ¾ will decide to leave your website before finalizing purchase.
Why do your customers leave abandoned carts in your e-shops?
As you may guess correctly, the main reason for abandoned carts and unfinished purchases is in most cases the price of the goods or the price of services. Often the visitor is just browsing and checking the prices, and simply wants to know how much the final price will be including all the „hidden fees“ such as shipping etc.
Another very common reason is „the need of registration“ before finalizing purchase or just limited range of payment methods. By the study of VWO company which offers very detailed monitoring of websites we know that already mentioned hidden fees and the need of registration is the reason for 50 % of all abandoned carts. This study included over thousands of e-shops worldwide.
Targito tip
Show your final prices, do not hide shipping cost and delivery methods, make them well visible and reachable without the need of difficult time-consuming searching in your cart. Reduce the number of steps in your purchase funnel and get rid of „you must register in order to make a purchase“. Make sure your website has good responsiveness and that it is a pleasant user experience not even on desktop but also mobile devices which statistically tend to be used more frequently causing higher traffic compared to desktop.
It is also important to know what “kind of device“ was used for login in. Statistics tell us that most abandoned carts occur with mobile devices – over 85 %, following with tablets – over 80 %. Relevant sources show that the main reason is bad optimization for mobile devices. Long, time consuming loading and bad responsivity force visitors to zoom in and out in order to move from section to another. Moreover, pop-up windows which are usually well designed for desktop can create some problems while being shown on mobile devices.
Where do your visitors buy their products which they left abandoned at your place?
More and more we see situations in which visitors deliberately leave carts and wait for a discount, which will be sent during abandoned cart campaigns. Trend which can be seen in Czech Republic nowadays is that visitors put products in carts, leave and come back in several days. The reason behind this is that such a behavior is to simulate a „wish list“ – only very few e-shops in our country use wish lists as a regular feature of their website.
Why is it so that your visitors put products in your cart? What is the reason for putting product in your cart and leaving without purchase?
Targito tip
Make sure you show the final price of your products including VAT. Similar problem was solved by the Alza shop. They were asked by their customers to show prices including VAT, so they did. Also include a wish list as another feature of your e-shop.
What motivates visitors of e-shop to buy products only from abandoned carts?
It is not a mystery that more than a half of visitors of e-shops are motivated by a discount in e-mail or by remarketing. Discount was and always will be the biggest hook for a purchase. However, there are still many e-shops with very low margins or not so good financial situation for which discount is not an option.
No need to worry, we have a solution even for those e-shop owners. Relatively big portion, approximately 10 % of visitors say that another big motivation for a purchase is the knowledge of the product being the last available on stock or popularity in general. Worldwide trend confirms it.
Conclusion
Abandoned carts are a phenomenon which is still evolving. If you run into a higher rate of abandoned carts without final purchase, make sure to check the whole purchase funnel of your e-shop. Check the difficulty of your shopping cart, check functions of your cart and if there are any possibilities of implementing and showing „badges of being trustworthy“ to your visitors.
Put your automatic emailing of abandoned cart to work. Based on statistics, the open rate of such an e-mail is very high. It has been around 43 % since 2016 and it’s still steadily growing. The reason for this is that being informed of abandoned cart is more relevant for a visitor than any other notification. Conversion rate is also relatively high and can get up to 18 % on average.
This kind of automatic emailing shows that personalization of your communication strategies can get you much better business results. If you are our client, you will see all those metrics well organized in this kind of campaign.