Picture someone walking into a brick-and-mortar store pushing an empty shopping cart. He or she goes up and down several aisles and places several products into the cart, seemingly ready to purchase them. But, instead of heading to the register and making the purchase, the would-be customer tucks the cart, laden with unbought goods, into a corner of the shop and walks out without having spent a penny.
They have, of course, abandoned their cart. While that doesn’t do the store much good (not to speak of the annoyance of re-shelving products), a shopping cart filled and then abandoned by a shopper is still better than the would-be customer never having entered the store. The same is true for the digital shopping cart of an online seller.
Rather than seeing shopping cart abandonment as a failure for your business, see it as an opportunity: With just a few changes made here and there, you can almost surely reduce cart abandonment rate and drive more sales.
What Is Cart Abandonment Rate?
“Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of customers who add items to their online cart, but leave the site without completing the purchase,” explains Brian Kroeker, president of Little Rock Printing. “It’s one of the clearest indicators of friction in the checkout process — or a sign that your customer isn’t ready to buy.”
An abandoned cart means you almost made a sale, but something went wrong. To figure out what went wrong, first you need to know the scope of the problem, meaning just how often people are bouncing instead of buying.
How to Calculate Cart Abandonment Rate
As long as you carefully track your online sales data (or lack of sales, as the case may be), it’s actually quite simple to calculate cart abandonment rates. “Here is an example cart abandonment rate calculation,” says Anthony May, founder of Need An Attorney. “If 1,000 shoppers added products to their cart, but only 300 completed the checkout, the cart abandonment rate is 70%. That’s not an exaggeration, either: Industry average cart abandonment rates typically range from 60% to 80%, depending on the industry and platform.”
What Causes Cart Abandonment?
There are many things that can cause cart abandonment, and I will discuss what are arguably the four most common causes here. But first, remember that sometimes a “customer” may have simply been browsing for fun (window shopping, for example) or else looking for a price comparison. You’re never going to achieve 0% cart abandonment, but these issues may well be driving up the numbers.
A Frustrating Shopping or Checkout Experience
Today’s customers want a seamless experience as they navigate your website or app, from the process of finding the right products, to sorting by size and color and such as applicable, and as it pertains to the actual checkout process. If there are too many steps to be completed and filled out prior to making that purchase, many customers will grow frustrated and impatient, and will simply bounce, potentially to a platform like Amazon where they know the buying process is truly simple.
Hidden Fees and Shipping Costs
If there is one thing that shoppers universally hate, it’s hidden fees that are tacked onto a purchase. Service fees, processing fees, and the like are the perfect way to ruin a sale. Additionally, people have grown to loathe shipping costs. As much as you can reduce shipping rates or even offer free shipping — potentially once a customer’s total purchase exceeds a certain value — you help to ensure a completed sale rather than an abandoned cart.
Limited Payment Options
People want to pay the way they want to pay — it is as simple as that. You must offer multiple payment methods if you want to minimize cart abandonment. At the bare minimum, you should accept credit cards and debit cards, Apple Pay, and PayPal, though there are other forms of payment you should strongly consider as well.
Required Account Creation
Always offer a guest checkout option to your customers. Some people may want to sign up for an account that will potentially get them discounts and benefits over time, but someone who is dropping into your site for a one-time purchase will quickly bounce out again if they are required to create an account just to complete a sale. It’s better to offer a quick and easy checkout, and hope the person has a great experience that will later encourage them to become a more loyal follower of your brand.
How to Improve Your Cart Abandonment Rate
Thinking through the experience your customers are having on your site or mobile app is the best way to reduce cart abandonment, so self-audit the entire shopping process with extreme objectivity, seeking out any pain points causing confusion, frustration, or delay.
Make the Payment Process Painless
An overly complicated checkout process is a reliable way to lose a sale. Any would-be customer who is the least bit on the fence about a purchase will very likely bounce if it’s difficult to complete the sale. “To reduce abandonment, e-commerce businesses should simplify their checkout process by looking to offer guest checkout options or even implementing apps like Shop if your website is on Shopify — anything for a quick process,” advises client development manager Ben Duffy of Quirky Digital.
Offer Cheap or Free Shipping
Offering free shipping, or at least very cheap shipping, is one of the best ways to ensure a lead converts to a buyer. “We’ve decreased our abandonment rate by providing a free shipping minimum,” says Amra Beganovich, co-founder of Amra & Elma, adding that the shipping offer was one of “the fixes that were implemented one by one, so we could observe what had real impact.” If you can’t afford low or free shipping costs, at least don’t allow for any surprises. “We’ve seen success lowering our cart abandonment rate by adding dynamic shipping estimates,” Kroeker adds.
Optimize Your Site and App
Ensure that your website and mobile app are well optimized for easy navigation and have a design and layout that makes for a pleasant and inviting experience. The easier it is for a customer to work his or her way around your site or app, the less buyer fatigue they will experience, and when it finally comes time to make the purchase, the more likely they are to go ahead and click that button, locking in the sale.
Send Follow-Up Emails
Remember, a cart abandoner was close to making the purchase — a little nudge may bring them back, especially if the nudge is made with incentives. “Using abandoned cart email reminders that offer support rather than pressure can bring buyers back,” says Kroeker.
Key Takeaways
There are many causes for cart abandonment. “Unexpected costs is the number one reason,” says May. “If the price jumps at checkout, people dip.” Then, there’s forced account creation. “Nobody wants to ‘sign up’ just to buy a $12 t-shirt,” May adds. A complicated checkout process with too many steps or forms equals frustration, too, and security concerns or a slow glitchy website can also cause bounces. Limited payment options is another major problem.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is cart abandonment rate different on mobile than on desktop?
Yes, according to data from OptInMonster (and cross-referenced elsewhere), there is a notably higher rate of cart abandonment on mobile devices versus desktop computers. The average rate of cart abandonment on mobile is around 69.02%, while the desktop computer average is 62.11%. This means that mobile users are around 7% more likely to abandon their shopping carts before completing a purchase.
What technology can I use to optimize cart abandonment rate?
To reduce cart abandonment, you need to increase positive engagement with shoppers. You can try AI-powered chatbots or, better yet, live chat options with a human, automated curated follow-up emails with offers that draw people back, and exit-intent popups that appear when a person seems ready to leave the site and that feature offers and discounts.
What is the average cart abandonment rate in e-comm?
Depending on myriad factors, such as the type of business and products in question, online cart rate abandonment percentages are usually between 60 and 80%, thus most marketing specialists settle on 70% as the overall average. If you experience cart abandonment at or below 60%, you can consider your online sales a success. On the other hand, if more than 80% of cards go abandoned, you definitely need to address the issue immediately.
