How can independent e-commerce sites effectively reduce shopping cart abandonment rates?

Cart abandonment is a situation where a customer selects an item and is ready to pay for it but ultimately decides not to purchase it. Often times, customers will browse a website, learn about a product, and even add the item to their cart, only to opt out during the payment session. This is a common occurrence, so what causes them to give up halfway through the process? And how can we take steps to reduce this abandoned shopping behavior?

Why abandonment

When a customer picks an item on a website but decides not to buy it at the last step, this is what we call abandonment. It means that they were going to buy it, but for some reason, they didn't end up buying it. If a website has a high abandonment rate, it not only means that the sales conversion rate will go down, but it also means that all the previous costs and efforts put in to attracting customers have been wasted. But what makes these prospective buyers finally decide to abandon their purchase?

Cumbersome process operation
Many customers actually place orders on a whim. But if the shopping process is too cumbersome, such as the need to register an account and fill out various information to complete the purchase, their initial desire to shop will soon dissipate. After all, no matter how interested a customer is in a product, their patience is limited when faced with complicated purchasing steps.

Freight Settings

If the postage is too expensive, customers may not buy it. Therefore, it's best to make the shipping cost clear on the product detail page, or run campaigns, such as free shipping when you buy more than one item, to attract customers.

Website issues

If the website's navigation is messy, pages are slow to open or jumping around is lagging, this can slow down the ordering process and the customer may just give up on the purchase because they're tired of waiting.

Single payment method

While the payment pages of many websites look similar, customers in different regions prefer to use different payment methods. Nowadays, while PayPal and credit cards are popular, in some countries people are more accustomed to using local payment methods. If a customer can't find the payment method she wants to use at checkout, she may abandon her purchase.

How to reduce the abandonment rate?

mail

The first email should be sent to consumers as soon as they add an item to their cart but haven't paid for it yet. Because at that time their desire to buy is still strong. The mail can put product information, discounts and so on, to help consumers decide to order. In foreign countries, email marketing is very effective, the conversion rate is as high as 19.2%.

Diverse payment options

As mentioned, customers sometimes don't buy things because they can't find the right payment option. Therefore, it is recommended that sellers study the payment methods commonly used by customers in different regions beforehand and add these payment options according to the local situation, so that they can solve the customer's payment problems and increase the chances of closing the deal.

Recall of potential customers using own channels
Merchants should update their product pages before the start of the campaign, which will attract more visitors and prepare them to follow up with potential customers. Additionally, using data to analyze visitors during the campaign, customized messages can be sent to these potential buyers to help increase close rates.

pop-up window to retain

On independent websites, pop-ups work like sellers trying to retain customers. Typically, this retention pop-up appears on the shopping cart page, and if the customer wants to leave, the pop-up appears to offer some special deal that encourages the customer to sign up or complete the purchase.