15 Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment in Your eCommerce Store

On average, 7.52% of online shopping sessions result in a product being added to a cart. Yet the average conversion rate for eCommerce stores is only 1.89%. 

The difference is all the shopping carts left abandoned.

Over two-thirds of all carts are abandoned without resulting in a purchase – which presents a huge opportunity for eCommerce brands.

Whether you reduce cart abandonment by reducing friction in your checkout process, or by reaching out to cart abandoners and convincing them to come back, there’s a huge amount of revenue on the table.

If you want to realize part of this revenue, read on, and we’ll share a complete list of actions you can take to reduce cart abandonment in your eCommerce store.

Is your store on Shopify? If so, check out these Shopify Cart Abandonment Apps that make recovering abandoned carts a breeze.

What is Cart Abandonment?

Cart abandonment is any time a shopper on your site adds a product to their cart but doesn’t check out and pay.

Abandoned carts apply for any online purchase where the user begins the checkout process but doesn’t complete it, such as a signup flow for a software product or a booking form on a travel site. But we’ll be looking at this from the lens of an eCommerce store.

On average, 70.19% of eCommerce carts are left abandoned.

Cart abandonment happens more on mobile and tablet devices than on desktop, and varies greatly from category to category.

Experts believe there’s more than $260 billion in recoverable revenue from abandoned carts.

If your brand can just take a tiny slice of that figure, you could seriously change the long-term outlook for your business.

Why Do Shoppers Abandon Carts?

The first step on your quest to reduce shopping cart abandonment is to understand why people leave a site without checking out.

Once you know why, solutions will become clear.

Research from Baymard gives us a number of common reasons people leave without checking out:

• Extra costs (shipping, tax, fees) - 47%
• The site wanted me to create an account - 25%
• Slow delivery - 24%
• Didn't trust the site with my credit card information - 19%
• Too long or complicated checkout process - 18%
• I couldn't see the total order cost up-front - 17%
• Returns policy wasn't satisfactory - 16%
• Website had errors or crashed - 14%
• Not enough payment methods - 11%
• The credit card was declined - 6%

Using this information, here are five board categories why cart abandonment happens.

Friction

With more friction comes more opportunity for potential customers to drop off.

Shoppers want an online shopping experience that requires as little effort as possible.

Once you require them to enter a lot of details, or go through multiple pages to complete their checkout, the likelihood of an abandoned cart drastically increases.

Distractions

There are a number of distractions that can derail a sure sale.

Some distractions come from everyday life (the person could get called away, leave their device, and forget about their cart).

Other distractions exist on the user’s device.

The average internet user has between 2-4 browser tabs open at one time. 

That’s only an average – it’s even common to have 11+ tabs open at the same time.

Online shoppers are particularly guilty of this, as many consumers have a habit of browsing multiple stores at the same time.

For brands, this means that you only have a shopper’s attention for so long.

It takes just a split second for the shopper’s attention to go somewhere else, at which point they may not come back.

Confusion

Shoppers are not ready to do hard math or complete a puzzle just to figure out how to finish their purchase.

We expect everything to be easy and spoon-fed. Especially with online shopping. The idea is convenience, and once it’s no longer convenient, most shoppers are out.

If it takes work to find the checkout, or if details about price, sizing or delivery are unclear, the shopper will look for a simpler option somewhere else.

Lack of Trust

Trust is an important part of the online buyer’s journey.

And adding a product to their cart doesn’t mean the shopper has complete trust in your website.

They could still be on the fence, or have objections that are not yet answered.

Any trust issues are amplified the closer it comes to entering payment details and hitting “Buy”. These issues make it more likely the customer will abandon their cart.

Cost

Cost is always one of the biggest obstacles to completing a purchase

Price perception is lower on a product page, compared to when you’re in the checkout, typing your credit card details.

Shoppers are often hit with extra costs in the checkout process, such as shipping costs and taxes, which make what seemed like a great deal turn into a high-ticket purchase.

So whether the shopper changed their mind when it came time to put their money where their mouse click was, or the final price ended up being significantly more than they expected, many abandoned carts are financially driven.

How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment

Now that you know the major reasons why shoppers leave their carts abandoned, you can work on a strategy to combat it.

There are many ways to reduce cart abandonment. Some, you may already be doing, but there’s almost certainly at least one opportunity here to lower cart abandonment by a few percentage points.

Here are 15 tactics to achieve a lower cart abandonment rate:

1. Clear CTAs
2. One-Page Checkout
3. Offer a Range of Payment Options
4. Flexible and Affordable Shipping
5. Save Customer Details
6. Offer Guest Checkout
7. Show Savings During Checkout
8. Live Chat
9. Exit-Intent Popups
10. Build More Social Proof
11. Address Common Objections
12. Avoid Hidden Costs
13. Send Abandoned Cart Notifications
14. Retargeting Abandoned Carts
15. Get People Into Your Mobile App

Let’s dive deeper into these actionable cart abandonment strategies now.

1. Provide Clear CTAs

The path to purchase must be clearly signposted for the user.

Don’t leave anything up to assumption or require any unnecessary thinking.

Use a call to action to make it clear when a product has been added to the customer’s cart, and show big, clear and obvious buttons showing how the customer can get to the checkout page and complete their purchase.

2. Use a One-Page Checkout

Every additional step in your checkout process is an opportunity for the customer to get frustrated and give up, or for their attention to drift away.

Make checking out as simple as possible, with all the necessities on one page. Don’t add unnecessary work by introducing extra clicks.

3. Offer a Range of Payment Options

Payment information is one of the biggest points of friction in the checkout process.

It's cumbersome to have to get up, find your card and type your credit card details in, particularly on mobile.

There's also a trust issue, with a lot of customers hesitant to provide their credit card details to a strange website.

You will overcome both these problems by offering multiple payment options. Many consumers prefer to use secure mobile payment services like Google Pay, Apple Pay, Shop Pay or PayPal, especially when shopping on a new site.

Also consider offering Buy Now Pay Later options like Klarna and Afterpay.

4. Provide Flexible and Affordable Shipping Options

Shipping makes a huge difference in eCommerce. We want fast, reliable, and cheap (ideally free) shipping.

The ability to offer better shipping options than anyone else is a big reason why Amazon is so popular.

High shipping costs are the most common reason for shopping cart abandonment. Yet for some shoppers, it's more important to get the product fast than to get it with free shipping.

According to a study from Advantec, free shipping is the most important delivery consideration for 49% of people, with an additional 9% prioritizing “low cost” shipping. For 31% of people, the most important thing is fast or same-day shipping.

Ideally you'll be able to provide shipping that's both free and fast.

If not, let customers choose between different options depending on what's most important to them - pay for fast delivery, or minimize shipping costs and wait a few more days to get their product.

5. Save Customer Details for Smooth Checkout

Repeat sales to loyal customers becomes much easier by saving their details for an expedited checkout process each time they come back.

Entering card details and delivery info in checkout is a significant point of friction.

It's even worse on mobile, where form input is more troublesome, which is a big reason why cart abandonment on mobile is much higher than desktop.

Cut out this friction and allow your returning customers to finalize their payment in just a few clicks.

6. Offer Guest Checkout Options

While saving customer details makes it easier for repeat customers to check out, many people don't want to do this.

25% of shoppers abandon their cart because they were required to create an account (the 2nd most common reason for cart abandonment).

Offering guest checkout as an option will appeal to these users, giving them a way to make a purchase without handing over a bunch of personal information to an eCommerce site they don't know.

7. Show Savings at Checkout

As discussed earlier, price perception is a lot different on a product page compared to the checkout page.

Shoppers get squeamish about the price when it comes time to actually pay.

To combat this, remind customers of how much they will save, on discounted products, bundles, or discount codes applied.

By doing this, you shift the shopper's attention away from how much they'll pay, to how much free value they're getting from their purchase.

8. Enable Live Chat

Live chat can help answer any questions or issues that are preventing the shopper from finalizing their order.

These questions are often easy to answer, and can be dealt with by a support rep (or even an AI chatbot).

But if the customer has to search and find these answers themselves, it's more likely that they'll bounce and go somewhere else.

9. Use Exit-Intent Popups

Exit-intent popups are one of the most common tools used by eCommerce retailers to prevent cart abandonment.

These popups trigger when a customer navigates away to another tab or moves their cursor towards the “X” button.

If it looks like the customer's about to leave, you will display a popup that reminds them to return and finish their purchase.

10. Build Social Proof

Trust is another thing that prevents online shoppers from completing the checkout process.

It requires much less trust to click "Add to Cart" than to enter your payment details and click "Buy".

So if you have a high cart abandonment rate, you may not have enough social proof to get unsure customers over the line.

You can build social proof with reviews on product pages, but also provide reviews and positive testimonials in the checkout flow, to provide an infusion of trust right when it’s needed most.

11. Address Common Objections

You will have an idea of the most common objections customers have that stop them from making a purchase.

Get ahead of these objections by addressing them on your product pages, or even during checkout.

Answer common objections in your product description, or directly address them in an FAQ section. You could also do this via a chat bubble that provides automatic answers to common questions.

12. Avoid Hidden Costs

Avoid giving your customers nasty surprises with hidden costs in the checkout.

We spoke on shipping costs earlier, but some stores hide other costs like taxes, service charges or setup fees, only to spring them on the customer when they go to pay.

Not only does this make price more of an obstacle, it can also degrade the trust you’ve worked hard to build and make the customer feel uneasy about continuing with their purchase. 

13. Send Abandoned Cart Follow Ups (Email & Push Notifications)

Reducing cart abandonment is not just about stopping people from leaving without checking out.

You can achieve the same result (more completed purchases, more revenue) by recapturing these abandoned carts later.

Every site needs an automated workflow to reach out to people who leave their carts abandoned, through channels like email and push notifications.

Push notifications, in particular, are a powerful way to recover abandoned carts.

When someone shops in your app, you can set up an automated push sequence that sends a notification if they add a product to their cart but don't complete their purchase.

These notifications can recover a crazy amount of revenue - some of our users at MobiLoud recovered as much as $200k in just 30 days!

14. Use Retargeting to Follow Up with Cart Abandoners

Retargeting is another great way to recapture abandoned carts.

Set up a campaign to automatically serve ads to people who left without paying for their cart.

Overall this tactic might be even more effective than abandoned cart emails, as it allows you to follow up with people even if they didn’t log in or provide an email address.

Of course, it costs more, as you need to pay to serve ads, but if you recover enough purchases you'll make a clean profit.

15. Get People to Shop in Your App

App users are less likely to abandon carts. They're also easier to reach with abandoned cart notifications.

An app is a more enclosed shopping experience, with fewer distractions (such as other browser tabs) that could lead to cart abandonment.

The checkout process is often smoother as well, compared to a mobile browser.

The sub-standard mobile browser experience is a large reason why cart abandonment is significantly higher on mobile.

You'll improve this experience with a native app.

Apps also make a brand more trustworthy (another barrier to purchasing), and as mentioned above, give access to native push notifications, which are incredible for sending abandoned cart follow ups.

How to Build an App For Your Store and Reduce Cart Abandonment

All eCommerce stores can reduce cart abandonment through website optimizations, such as improving your checkout flow and using intuitive UX practices leading customers toward a purchase.

If you’ve done all this and want to reduce cart abandonment further, and your brand doesn't already have a mobile app, you should absolutely launch one.

App shoppers convert at a higher rate, spend more, abandon their carts less, and are easier to follow up with if they do.

Launching your own app is easier (and cheaper) than you think.

You don’t need to spend hundreds of thousands on developers and build a mobile development team, when MobiLoud allows you to launch an app for a fraction of the time, cost and effort.

MobiLoud simply converts your existing, mobile-optimized website into an app, completely synced with your website.

It works no matter what eCommerce platform you use, and unlike most app builders, any custom features, apps or alterations on your site will work the same in your app.

This gives you all the benefits of a native app for a negligible cost, with minimal work required (both upfront and ongoing), launched in less than a month.

If you want to learn more, get in touch with us to schedule a free demo.

We'll give you an in-depth look at the process that companies such as John Varvatos, Rainbow Shops, Bestseller and Perfume.com used to launch mobile apps hassle-free, without compromising on quality, and explain how you can leverage an app to reduce cart abandonment and grow sustainable, long-term revenue for your brand.