Five strategies to avoid cart abandonment

The e-commerce space is becoming more and more crowded, and since the pandemic moved consumers to be heavily based online rather than in brick-and-mortar stores, it’s important to know how to sell your products and services online.

One woman who figured out the perfect formula is Anaita Sarkar, who started and grew a business from her loungeroom into a 100-orders-a-day company. She then launched a second e-commerce business, Hero Packaging, which is turning over $3 million in revenue just two years later.

In this extract from Sarkar’s book Sell Anything Online, business owners can learn how to make sure their customers go the whole mile to the “buy now” button.

Avoid cart abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is when your customers add items to their online shopping cart but leave your website before making the purchase. Cart abandonment is one of the biggest areas of revenue loss in any online store. In fact, on average, nearly 68% of all shopping carts are abandoned. That means, two out of every three potential customers is leaving your site without checking out.

It’s nearly impossible to get a 0% cart abandonment because consumers do change their minds and can get distracted and may leave because of non-website related matters. However, there are ways to minimise it based on key website strategies.

Here are five tactics to reduce cart abandonment:

Exit intent: One of the best ways you can reduce shopping cart abandonment is to create a popup that uses exit-intent technology. There are many website apps that can do this. An exit-intent popup will display when a customer is actively leaving your checkout page (specifically when they hover over the ‘x’ on the website tab or pause for too long on mobile). This means you can capture your customer’s attention at the exact moment they plan to abandon their carts. And if you really want to reduce cart abandonment, you can use this moment to incentivise your potential customer with a coupon code or free shipping.
Cut out surprises: This is very important. Make sure your customers are aware of shipping costs, handling times and shipping times before they reach the cart. In fact, every page on your site should have this information displayed prominently. This way, customers don’t have any surprises at the checkout stage.
Have multiple payment options: Having a diverse range of payment options is crucial to any e-commerce site. Every customer is different and has different purchasing behaviours online. Not everyone wants to pay via a credit card. Not everyone can pay the full amount in one go. If you don’t cater to several payment preferences, you will lose customers. For example, when I added AfterPay to my website, my sales increased by 30%, which means before adding AfterPay, I was potentially losing 30% of sales. Here are the most popular payment options that you should include in your store: Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, AfterPay, ZipPay, Klarna, Alipay, and Bank Deposit (only if you can handle the admin).
Have multiple shipping options: Giving consumers several delivery options is a proven way to avoid them leaving the checkout page. Expectations around delivery and dispatch have skyrocketed, to the extent that if you’re not offering a particular delivery option, you risk losing not only this transaction, but any future transactions from this customer. These are some of the shipping options and service levels you should have: regular shipping, express post, local pickup, international shipping options — standard and express, same-day shipping, and next-day shipping.
Remind customers of your wow factor at checkout: This is another time to bring up your amazing value offering. Do you offer free shipping? A loyalty program? 24-hour customer service? Free returns? An exclusive Facebook group for customers? Remind them at checkout to reduce abandonment.