It takes a tremendous amount of market understanding, effort, and teamwork to build a brand and business. However, it’s considered truly successful only when its sales and revenue look promising. And for that to happen, you as a brand have to win the customer’s trust. And even that can truly be measured not only with a customer “willing” to buy your products or services but also to go ahead and make that purchase.
However, even with everything in place – from your product placement to effective marketing campaigns, it can become quite challenging for your business if the customer ‘almost’ completes the whole cycle only to leave right before the last (and probably the most important aspect for your business) stage – by abandoning their cart.
What Is Cart or Basket Abandonment?
Basket or cart abandonment is the term used to describe a situation when a customer begins a purchase by adding products to their shopping cart or subscribing to a service. However, they leave the site towards the end before making the final purchase. You can compare this to the brick-and-mortar storefronts, where many times customers explore and walk around with products in their baskets, but at last, they leave them at the checkout: leaving the store without making a purchase.
8 Reasons for Cart Abandonment
1. Complicated and Time-Consuming Checkout
One of the most common reasons customers quit payment is a lengthy, complex checkout procedure. Every additional step and form field slows the user’s payment process and makes it more complicated. Customers like a simple, convenient process, thus any extra steps detract from the user experience.
What can be done: Don’t keep multiple stages, limit data entry, and optimise the checkout process to make it more streamlined and simple. Set up an auto-save feature for when consumers abandon their shopping carts with things in them and use auto-fill forms whenever they are practical.
2. Slow Delivery with Limited Shipping Alternatives
Delivery is an essential part of the e-commerce experience. Customers anticipate convenient shipping options and deliveries on time.
What can be done: Provide clients with several delivery alternatives, including a feature to personalise shipment information. Allow clients to adjust delivery timings and choose among delivery companies to get the experience they want.
3. High Extra Expenditures (Taxes, Shipping, and Other Fees)
Unexpected expenditures when a customer adds an item to the cart cause the customer to reconsider their purchase. Some buyers will even add goods to their cart just to see the final total. When people see the additional fees, chances are less they will proceed.
What can be done: Give a full breakdown of all charges upfront to customers, including shipping costs, applicable taxes, and any extra fees they should expect. Don’t keep surprises at a later stage of the buying process. These details can be displayed on the product detail page by prompting the buyer for their zip code. Customers who are less shocked after adding an item are more likely to buy.
4. Issues with Website Performance
A site should not take more than a couple of seconds to load, otherwise you might lose a potential customer right at your doorstep. Slow-loading speed, crashes, or bugs are the most off-putting when shopping online or visiting any site for that matter. These problems can arise because of inadequate website infrastructure, a lack of site optimisation, or excessive traffic levels.
What can be done: Monitor site speed frequently and invest in reliable hosting options. Set up content delivery networks and tweak pictures and scripts for faster loading.
5. Less Transparency in Showing All the Expenses Upfront
Pricing is a crucial consideration for online customers, especially when they are not visiting any physical stores upfront to get a ‘feel’ of what they’re buying. A lot of sites don’t reveal complete pricing information in the beginning, including taxes and delivery expenses. For the customers who initially add things to shopping carts to calculate the overall cost of their order, this feels quite inconvenient and confusing.
What can be done: Give customers complete pricing information before they add products to their shopping basket. Customers are more willing to proceed if they know the complete price in advance.
6. Excessive Upselling
Though brands opt for upselling and cross-selling to boost sales and increase their average order value, bombarding clients with cross-promotions to an excess can divert their attention away from the original purchase and annoy or confuse them.
What can be done: Exercise caution while cross-selling to customers. Test abandonment and upselling statistics to better understand your successes and issues, allowing you to cross-sell without losing consumers.
7. An Easily Missed Issue: The Site Is Not Mobile Friendly
With more than half of e-commerce sales happening on mobile, e-commerce shops with average mobile designs are failing to satisfy the majority of their customers.
What can be done: Prioritise your e-commerce store’s mobile design first. Go for a responsive design that works not only on desktop devices but mobiles too. Standardise your shopping cart and checkout design for all kinds of devices to ensure that users have a consistent buying experience across all platforms.
8. Limited Payment Options
If you provide a limited number of payment options to choose from, it might not suit all customers. Sometimes businesses begin with only a few payment methods either for convenience or because they are comfortable with them, missing the end goal of it all: fulfilling the expectations of their customers. You should even go the extra mile by offering regionally popular payment methods in specific marketplaces.
What can be done: Provide a variety of payment options, such as credit and debit card payments, bank transfers, digital wallets, and, when applicable, by now, pay later (BNPL) options.
But Why Should Cart Abandonment Be Analysed?
- Building Customer Trust
Online transactions rely heavily on trust. A client abandoning a basket due to concerns about payment security or imprecise return rules demonstrates a breakdown in trust. Addressing these concerns directly can help a company’s reputation for being trustworthy and dependable. - Building and Sustaining Revenue
A single transaction, when viewed in isolation, may appear insignificant. However, maintaining that customer and encouraging repeat transactions can significantly raise the lifetime worth of the business. Addressing basket desertion can improve retention rates and develop longer-term consumer relationships.
Abandoned Cart Doesn’t Mean All Is Lost! Here’s How Zence Can Help You with Cart Recovery
Zence allows businesses to send personalised messages to customers who have abandoned their carts, reminding them of their items and offering incentives to complete their purchases. By leveraging WhatsApp, Zence enables brands to communicate directly with customers and initiate an abandoned cart recovery in a way that feels personal and convenient, fostering trust and building relationships. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. We offer solutions tailored to your unique needs and industry-specific use cases. Request a demo with us today to know how.
