If you have an online store, you should be familiar with the term ‘shopping cart abandonment’ or ‘abandoned carts’.  An abandoned cart is what you have when someone visits your online store, adds items to their cart, but doesn’t checkout. They came, they browsed, they abandoned.

it’s not always a bad thing

If your e-commerce software tracks abandoned carts, you might be shocked by the figures. Research conducted in the last 15 years indicates shopping cart abandonment sits at anywhere from 45% to 90% – that’s massive. But it can also be a fantastic indicator of future sales. Taking the time to add items to their cart could be the customer’s way of tallying a total so they can gather their funds and come back later.

why it happens

There’s a plethora of research on shopping cart abandonment, and some of the most important is on the reasons behind it. Some of the top reasons revealed in various studies include:

• Unhappy with payment method options
• Lack of funds
• Preferred to shop in person
• High shipping charges
• Unsure of the online store’s credibility or security
• The item(s) unavailable at checkout
• Confused or overwhelmed by the checkout process

fix: be transparent

When shopping online, customers often forget about shipping when considering the total dollar value of their cart. Be up front and very clear about your shipping costs. If you have a flat rate, advertise it on your home page. If it’s calculated based on the cart contents, try having a minicart visible on all pages of your store, and include shipping costs in this section. Shocking customers with your shipping rates when they’re almost finished checkout is enough to a) turn them off and b) piss them off. Not a good combination.

fix: revamp your site

If potential customers are questioning the security and credibility of your site, you need to consider what it looks like, what your e-commerce software brings to the party and what information you provide. You could:

• Review what information you make available about your business. Does your site consist of an online store and nothing else? How do your customers know who they’re doing business with? If they have no idea, how can they trust you?
• Revisit the site’s design. If your site doesn’t quite scream “We are trustworthy!” you can’t either, can you? First impressions are important. Your DIY or templated website design may have served you well for the first year, but it might be time to think about the next step.
• Make sure checking out is easy. Don’t make the checkout hard to navigate or too long. You don’t need their date of birth, fax number, all 4 numbers they can be contacted on, or anything else that isn’t absolutely necessary for the sale. 2-3 page checkout maximum is good. 1 page checkout is even better.

fix: inline validation

Use a shopping cart that uses inline validation. In English: make sure your shopping cart tells your customer if they enter a mistake when they enter it, not after they’ve filled out a whole page and submitted it.

fix: make it safe

It’s important that your site makes your customers feel as secure as possible handing over their credit card details. Make sure you have an SSL certificate installed behind your site, and also make it obvious. Most SSL providers will have images you can place around your site to tell your customer they’re about to checkout securely. They may not be pretty to look at, but including one promotes trust.

fix: have a guest checkout option

Not every customer that visits your online store wants to register. It’s like walking into your local K-Mart and being told you need to hand over your full name, address, phone number and email address before being allowed to make a purchase. Choosing online store software that has a guest checkout option as default or comes with the option to upgrade means less risk in the shopping cart abandonment stakes.

There are plenty more ways you can help reduce shopping cart abandonment, although you’ll never get it down to zero. Our advice is to constantly review your site, make notes of what’s working and what’s not, take customer feedback seriously, and never stop looking for ways to improve.

shameless plug: We’re big believers in e-commerce software that just works and we get as frustrated as you do at software that doesn’t. That’s why we spent hundreds of hours developing blueCart eCommerce, our online store software. It’s smart. It’s beautiful. It’s easy to use. If you’re ready to dropkick your dodgy online store and upgrade to a shiny new blueCart store that’ll make you and your customers happy, let us know.