The average shopping cart abandonment rate is 69.89%. How high is yours?
People abandon their carts for a variety of reasons. From unexpected shipping costs to simply not being ready to buy a product, there always seems to be a reason that people do not follow through with their orders. The graphic below highlights these reasons, taken from studies done by Baymard Institute and Invesp. Check them out to see if any apply to you!
Taking these stats into account, we came up with a list of recommendations on how to improve your checkout to reduce cart abandonment.
So what should you test?
1. Add support for digital wallets (Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal One Touch). They have improved mobile conversion by up to 10% at launch.
2. Offer a Guest Checkout (do not force users to login or create an account before to check out).
3. Minimize the information requested in the checkout form.
4. Add a Wish List feature to your site if it doesn’t already have one.
5. Test offering free shipping on all orders. Otherwise, add a Shipping Estimator in the Cart (see the example on the right).
6. Test a One-Page Checkout, especially if your average order value is low and you’re selling impulse purchases. Compare your conversion rate with a multiple-step checkout.
7. Remove your website navigation during the checkout process. Keep the necessary contact information and ideally a Live Chat. Also include links to your privacy policy, shipping details, FAQ and returns policy.
8. Make sure your checkout is secure. Include credit card logos and trust seals.
9. Display the visitor’s progress (steps), if it is a multi-step checkout.
10. Show the discount code box before they enter their credit card information.
11. Use cart abandonment software to follow-up by email with visitors who did not complete the process.
12. Analyze your visitors’ sessions with a tool like Hotjar or Full Story to get insights into why they abandoned their cart. Full Story offers a free version with 1,000 monthly sessions, 1 month retention of data, and 3 teammate seats.
13. Differentiate the Checkout and Continue Shopping button colors.
That said, always test these for yourself! Why?
In a test conducted on the Vancouver Olympics website, a single-page checkout increased conversion rates by 21.8%. On the other hand, Invesp conducted a multi-page vs. single page checkouts test for a large furniture retailer (with an average order value close to $2,000), and the multi-page checkout increased conversions by 38%. Different businesses have different needs and should be treated as such.
How do you plan on decreasing your cart abandonment rate?
*** This is a guest blog post by Matt Tanguay where he shares his numbers-backed findings in the form of Ecommerce conversion tips ***
Sources
- 40 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics (Baymard Institute)
- 11 Best Practices for eCommerce Homepage UX (Frosmo Ltd.)
- Your M-Commerce Deep Dive: Data, Trends and What’s Next in the Mobile Retail Revenue World (Big Commerce)
- 5 Secrets To Boosting E-Commerce Revenue (Forbes)
- 9 Crucial – But Overlooked – Aspects of Mobile eCommerce UX (Lemonstand)
