Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Reasons for ecommerce cart abandonment

What are the top reasons for Cart Abandonment in ecommerce?

What is the percentage of customer cart abandonment instances of your ecommerce site, when compared to order confirmation? What are the top reasons your customers abandon the cart and never complete the checkout?
If you have a customer who has come to you site to shop, your marketing has worked to bring the customer to your site. If you do not manage to capitalize this opportunity and convert this footprint to sale, you have lost your customer, not just for this one purchase but may be for future as well. In fact, in this world of digital social networking, it does not take long for publicity – both good and bad. You perhaps also lost some prospective customers.
In 2011, the average cart abandonment Rate was 65.23%. This is subsequently higher during Black Friday and Cyber Monday. In 2012, the statistics reveal that this percentage would be higher than the prior years.
What are the top reasons why your customers abandon the cart?
While there may be reasons that are solely customers specific, like the customer is not ready to make the purchase or the customer changed his mind or any other constraint specific to him. In this article, I would like to call out the reasons that are more retailer specific and things that could be changed or improved, so that the retailer provides the customer a seamless checkout flow.
Listed below are some of the reasons why the customer would abandon the cart:

     1. Delayed Stock check:

Ecommerce websites that do not perform a real time inventory check on color, size when the customer adds the item to the cart, result to customer’s frustration. Perform the stock check when the customer is making the selection on the product page and adding it to the cart. Performing a stock check in checkout, when the decision has been made, would only lead to customers abandoning the cart.

     2. Lengthy registration / no guest checkout:

If you are the lucky once to have new visitors on the website, build the customer relationship. It is good enough for you to just get the email id of the customer. The guest checkout should be as little as email address. It is important to capture one way to reach out your customer. Don’t miss that by throwing a registration form that makes your customer close the browser. If the customer chooses to register, the MUST HAVE information on your site should be minimal.

     3. Insecure checkout:

With an increase in cybercrime, the users have become very careful about providing their information over the web. Make sure that your ecommerce allows for a secure checkout in order to gain confidence of the user during checkout.

     4. Limited payment options:

Does your site provide all possible options to the customer on the payment? At the very basic, the ecommerce site should have debit / credit / gift card checkout as the payment methods. If you offer loyalty programs, the checkout should make it easy for the customer to use their points and redeem them partially or completely against the purchase.

     5. Coupons and offers:

Do you restrict the user on how to use the coupons and offers that are not clearly called out in the offer itself? Showing new variables during checkout would disappoint the customer and make rethink, sometimes abandoning the cart.


     6. High shipping cost:

Ecommerce today has grown rapidly and one of the reasons why people buy online is because of simplicity and getting the options that they need in the comfort of their house. However, the whole purpose to buy online would be defeated if, in order to shop online, the customer is paying a very high shipping charge. While next day shipping could be offered at a high cost, most customers are not willing to pay additional for ground shipping. Low product cost and high shipping results in abandoned carts. Offer the customers free or lower shipping for normal delivery and pick up in store options.

     7. Restricted shipping:

Do you offer a varied shipping option to all locations? One of the things that get traded in online shopping when compared to in-store purchase is the time duration to have the product. Although online shopping does give the convenience to purchase, if the shipping takes too long, it may not interest the buyer. They may prefer buying it from the nearby store in order to get the product on time. Make sure the shipping options are competitive enough and are not a reason for the customer to leave the cart.

     8. Ugly / complex user interface:

If the user interface you provide is loud, ugly or complex, it would not please your customers.
Have a clean design with a very well-toned and marketable copy. Provide the information in the right place and be cautious about the data. A few usability ideas would be to display the user progress, limiting the call to action, displaying discount and calculating the final price early in the checkout process, designing the layout that goes with the eye flow etc.

     9. Difficult to decipher CAPTCHAs:

If you are using CAPTCHAs, chances are that it would lower your conversion rate. Every user finds it difficult to interpret; they carry no meaning and are difficult to read. Sites using CAPTCHAs for all secure transactions may have a high cart abandonment rate, for the simple reason that it impacts the usability and restricts the flow of the customer.

     10. High price compared to competitor:

Smart shopaholics always compare prices across competitors. If your items are priced more than one your competition is offering, why would anyone proceed with the order? Would you?

     11. Unfriendly Returns and Exchange Policy:

Online shopping has once clear drawback. When you buy in store, what you see is what you get. However, that logic fails with online purchases. Have a fair returns and exchange policy for online purchases comes as a package with online shopping. If you make the returns and exchanges difficult, the pitfall would be lower conversion rates.

     12. Technical issues:

If your website responds real slow or has bugs that stop the user to proceed, chances that the customer would keep trying to complete their order are slim.

     13. Cross sells and up-sells:

Are you doing cross sells and up-sells during the checkout process? If you are doing so, perhaps instead of helping you to gain more business, it is confusing the customer thereby delaying their purchase. Once the customer has reached checkout, DO NOT give any second thoughts to him to go back and revisit the decision. You would have customers email id once the order is purchased; cross-sell and up-sells would follow after the order is placed. These act as distractions if shown during checkout.

     14. Delivery options:

Give the options of delivery to the customer and do not restrict. You sites need an upgrade if you do not provide options to order online; purchase from a store; order online and get delivered to a near by store.

     15. Not living up to your promise:

If you promised the customer any discount, loyalty program, offers, coupons, free shipping – make sure you live up to it. Any deviation from what you promised would lead to lack of trust and not help conversion.


In short, an abandoned cart directly hits your topline. While above is one aspect of taking a hit on the topline, there are corrective ways to win customers who abandoned carts.

In the fast moving digital world, it is important that the business seek feedback from the customers, look at the usability of their commerce site, as well as learn from the metrics on what could be done in order to increase sales and profit margins.

Let me know what you think about this article. If you have ever experienced any situation leading you to leave the cart, please feel free to share.


6 comments:

  1. Excellent and comprehensive article; I also read your article on how to win back customers who abandon their carts. I very much agree with your #2, and would add: Do not abuse their email address! Recently I bought something from Amazon; now I get a "helpful" email (or two) from them almost every day. It's very annoying.

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  2. Thanks for your advices. It will be sure helpful to set these values. I have bookmarked your site to transmit it to my colleagues.

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  3. Excellent article and well detailed out.

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