How To Reduce Your Cart Abandonment Rate

Cart abandonment is a bummer to deal with when you’re running a promising ecommerce store. Sales are slipping from your grasp, and it will bug you for as long as you don’t take any action towards it.

However, you shouldn’t feel too discouraged. The fact that shoppers are browsing your store and showing an interest in your products is great. And if you learn how to reduce your cart abandonment rate, this number can actually be an opportunity.

Think about it – you have people in your funnel, dropping out very close to the end of it. That means you don’t have to spend a ton of money to acquire new clients, you just need to convince these people to follow through with their purchase.

Let’s see how you can do that.

What is cart abandonment rate?

Cart abandonment rate is the percent of people that add products to their cart, but then never proceed to checkout. The thing you should remember: cart abandonment rate is unavoidable. Regardless of what you do, a lot of people (in fact, most people that visit your site) will create a cart, then they’ll abandon it altogether.

In fact, according to a ton of statistics and research on the average cart abandonment rate, about 55%-80% of the people that want to buy something will end up closing their tab.

However, this doesn’t mean you should be complacent. Because there are ways you can change these visitors’ minds. To understand how, let’s first look at why people abandon carts in the first place.

Why do people abandon carts?

Trying to tell you the numbers on these reasons is impossible. In fact, I can’t say “X% of your visitors abandon carts because they’re discouraged by your high shipping costs” without first taking a deep dive into your analytics and surveying your customer base.

So we’re not going to focus on numbers here. That’s on you, and you should try to gauge your audience as much as possible to find out the details, and realize what objections you should be focused on.

However, we will look at the common culprits, just so you can know what to focus on.

In general, people abandon carts because:

• They don’t trust buying from you. Maybe you have no money-back guarantees, no SSL certificate, or just didn’t spend the time to build a relationship with your audience.
• They’re discouraged by your shipping price or policies. This is especially a problem if people that live far away from you end up on your site, or if you have long shipping times.
• The total they got for each product is more than what they can afford. 
• They’re not convinced your product is right for them.
• They get distracted by other things on the internet.

And a lot more, but these are the most common objections people have.

So how do you go around them?

How to reduce your cart abandonment rate in 4 simple steps

Before we get into it, remember that you won’t ever be able to bring the abandonment rate down to zero. However, that doesn’t mean all the people that will still abandon your cart are lost forever. There are ways to recapture these people even after they leave your site.

More about that in a bit.

For now, let’s see a few simple steps to reduce cart abandonment.

1. Do more to inspire trust.

If you are able to inspire more trust with your copy and on-page elements, you can convert more people, especially since this is one of the most common reasons for people abandoning carts on your site.

And the way to go about this is simple.

First, make sure you offer as many payment methods as you can.

After that make sure you feature some sort of money-back guarantee, or clearly defined refund policy. Most people won’t need it, but much more of them will rest assured when they see that they can easily refund a product.

Other than that, any investment in building trust with your customer base – like a strong blog, smartly crafted messaging or awareness campaigns will go a long way in building trust and it’s one of the ways you can reduce your cart abandonment rate.

2. Use user interface tricks.

One of the reasons people abandon carts has to do with the process itself – if it’s too long, or has them input too much information all at once, it can get daunting, and they might actually abandon their cart for that reason alone, especially when the value of the purchase wasn’t that big.

You can go around this by breaking up the checkout process. Don’t ask for their personal information, shipping details, and card details all at once. Create separate windows for each, have customers progress through them at a slow pace, and always display the progression bar on top:

In a similar note, navigation on your website should be in top shape. Visitors should be able to easily switch between store pages and the cart at any moment.

Lastly, make sure you split test CTAs and come up with the best design and copy mix for each button or call to action.

3. Write good copy.

Product descriptions, prices and details should be outlined in a catchy fashion, but you should never overlook important details. This is especially important when it comes to pricing or product variations.

However, learning how to reduce your cart abandonment rate means learning how to convert better. In that, you can never fail with sizable investments in your copy quality, either by spending more time in writing flawless, conversion-focused product descriptions, or by paying professionals to do it for you.

4. Focus on your shipping policy.

People want the products they order online to be delivered fast. Considering Amazon’s 24h delivery promise on so many orders, it might sometimes be hard to compete.

But you have to. You should strive to have an enticing shipping policy, because bad shipping is one of the reasons people abandon carts in the first place. Even if you can’t rival Amazon’s 24h delivery, your policy should be clearly visible, as well as your shipping prices, so people don’t feel “scammed” when they end up on your checkout page.

And always remember…

Learning how to reduce your cart abandonment rate is an ongoing process. We’ve outlined the main objections people have, and how to circumvent them, but the details are different from store to store.

It’s up to you to understand your audience. Focus on that, and you’re on track to reduce your store’s cart abandonment rate.