Ecommerce Experiment

For most eCommerce sites, the biggest loss of revenue is at the checkout due to shopping cart abandonment. Around 60% of shopping baskets are abandoned before customers have completed their purchase meaning businesses are losing thousands of potential sales. Reasons for basket abandonment can be; high delivery costs, checkout problems, lengthy registrations, fear about the security of their personal information or that the shopper is merely browsing or comparison shopping.

Here are 10 tips to reduce shopping basket abandonment rates and INCREASE SALES on your eCommerce site…

1.       Keep the checkout process short and simple and don’t ask for any information that isn’t necessary. It may seem like the perfect opportunity to gather information about your customers, however lengthy registrations can put customers off and cause them to abandon their baskets.

2.       Make all additional costs i.e. delivery charges clear from the beginning of the checkout process so there are no shocks about seeing the total of the basket suddenly increase due to shipping costs right before the customer is about to make their payment.

3.       Give full contact information during the checkout process to reassure customers you are a real company and reduce their anxieties about purchasing online.

4.       Inform customers about the policies you have in place either on the checkout page itself or via a link available on it. These may include security, privacy, delivery, return and customer service policies. It is often a good idea to place links to these policies in relevant places, for example, delivery and return policies next to the shipping costs and your security policy next to the checkout button.

5.       Include a progress indicator showing steps of checkout so the customer knows steps they have already completed and those left to complete. Also give the customer the option to go back a step if they need to review or amend what they have done. It is a good idea to limit the checkout process to two or three steps.

6.       Provide links back to items selected in the shopping basket so customers can double check they have selected the items they wanted.

7.       Using pictures of products inside the shopping basket has been known to reduce abandonment rates by 10%. Again this is to ensure the customer knows they have selected the item they planned to purchase.

8.       Make editing the shopping cart easy. It should be simple to change products, change quantities, add and delete items. If customers become confused or frustrated about doing this they will abandon their shopping cart without making a purchase.

9.       Show stock availability for each item on product page so that customers don’t have to reach the checkout before realising the product that they wanted is out of stock or backordered.

10.       Offer the option of saving the shopping basket. Comparison shoppers often add items to their shopping baskets without any intention to make a purchase at that time. Give them an option to save their basket for later purchase. Also, this is another reason to show stock availability on the product page; if there is limited stock left for the item they are looking at, it may encourage them to make a purchase there and then.