[5-minute read]
Cart abandonment − it happens, apparently more often than we know. According to the latest figure provided by Statistica, just over 88% of online shopping orders are not converted due to cart abandonment. At 70.9%, Europe has the lowest cart abandonment rate in the world. By comparison, that rate is the lowest, but think about it − 70.9% of e-commerce shoppers consciously select items to purchase but when the moment of truth arrives, they make a dash for it.
High shipping costs, dysfunctional promo codes and tedious checkout processes are some of the main culprits behind why carts are abandoned. That’s another topic altogether. We wanted to find out how to avoid cart abandonment. For that, we turned to Kyle Rosendo, COO at Truevo Payments − here’s what he had to say:
1. Keep it simple
When it comes to the checkout process, Leonardo da Vinci said it best: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Make things too complicated for your customer and they’ll be a goner. Tip: Instead of asking your customer for their full address, use a Google Maps plugin that will auto-populate all the details when a location is selected. Look for these kinds of quick fixes. As Neil Patel says: “ask for less, and they’ll buy more.”
2. Keep it transparent
Does your checkout process have a progress bar? If it doesn’t, we recommend building one so your customers know exactly where they are in the process and how much time it will take. The most valuable commodity in the world of online shopping is time, so don’t waste a second. We’ve taken our own advice. If you’re reading this, you’d probably have noticed the time estimate at the beginning of the article. You knew exactly how much time you would need to invest before you started reading, and look − here you are.
3. Make it mobile
Once upon a time, mobiles simply didn’t feature in the world of online shopping − everyone was shopping on a desktop. The times, however (in the words of Bob Dylan), are a-changin’. As of 2018, the number of mobile shoppers in Western Europe as a proportion of all online shoppers was at over 60%. The move to mobile is significant. You want to make contact with your prospective shoppers where they are. And where they are, is on their mobile phones, browsing your site, hoping to check out in minutes. Your challenge is to make that process as seamless and mobile-friendly as possible.
4. Be an up-sell early bird
Have a two-for-one deal on the product that the customer selected? Have an accessory to punt that goes with their purchase? If you have some cross-selling or up-selling to do, get in there as early as possible. Don’t cram all that extra information into the checkout process. Once the customer arrives at checkout, they only want to do one thing − check out.
5. Offer secure payment options
The internet can be a treacherous place and your customers are wary of this. If you can provide a private and secure payment process, you’re already halfway there. If you store, transmit or process cardholder data, you must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). If you are not PCI compliant, or if you would like to minimise your PCI requirements, choose a Payment Gateway that can fulfil the responsibility of PCI compliance. By the way, you’ll find all that (and more) at Truevo.
Have some tips to share on how you streamlined your checkout process? We’d love to hear them. Connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
