Being a part of the online shopping business, you must have heard a variety of fancy terms, right? Amidst all, WooCommerce Cart Abandonment or Cart Abandonment Optimisation are such terms that are used often but are understood very less.
In simple words, shopping cart abandonment is when a potential lead begins the checkout process for an order but drops out in the middle without completing the purchase. Any item that is put in the shopping cart but gets never transacted is called abandoned by the shopper. It is often because of poorly done cart abandonment optimisation
Of the entire online shopping procedure, shopping cart abandonment is a vital aspect that must be paid attention to for better results.
The Current Situation of Cart Abandonment Optimisation
If you are looking for a not so fun fact, know that 98% of people who are visiting your online store are not going to make a purchase. Shocked? The feeling is undeniable. However, surprisingly, this is not the biggest nightmare for marketers.
On the contrary, an average eCommerce store loses more than 75% of sales to the abandonment of shopping carts. Customers visit the portal, put a product in cart and simply drop out instead of completing the purchase.
But, what could be the reason behind these abandonments, is it because of poorly Cart abandonment optimisation? The list definitely includes a lot of factors. Although every store is different in nature, hence the difference in the WooCommerce conversion rate; however, the reasons behind the cart abandonment are pretty similar.
One of the major issues that people are facing these days is a lack of trust. Not everybody will be comfortable adding their card details into an online portal. Hence, if yours is a newly found business, it may take some time before you establish your significance in the market and earn the trust of users.
Another major issue that may stop people from completing their purchase is the complexity of the checkout flow. If your check out procedure is quite long and asking for irrelevant information from the customer, it may result in them dropping out instead of completing the purchase.
Ways to Perform Cart Abandonment Optimisation on Your WooCommerce Store:
Jotted down below are a handful of methods that can help you bring down the WooCommerce cart abandonment rate substantially. Have a read.
Attract Customers with Shipping Discounts:
One of the best ways that can help you get cart abandonment optimisation is by cutting down on shipping costs for customers. Undoubtedly, shipping can contribute greatly to the entire shopping expense – something that the customer might not feel accounted for.
So, while the price tag on the product might seem like a good deal, factoring the shipping may disrupt the budget of your customer. In such a situation, providing a discount or offering free shipping could turn out to be the best way to attract people so that they can complete their purchase.
Moreover, customers are likely to buy more if shipping is not an issue for them. One of the best examples is by Zappos – an online shopping platform. By mentioning the offer of free shipping on the head of the landing page, they let customers know what they are getting into. So make sure there is complete transparency between you and your customers – whether or not you are charging them a shipping cost.
Shorten The Checkout Process:
One of the substantial cart abandonment reasons is a drawn-out checkout process. The last thing that any of your customers would want is to experience a long checkout page. The current age users expect their shopping experience to be streamlined as well as seamless.
So, if you are binding them with lengthy check out processes, they are probably going to drop the idea of purchasing anything from your website at all. Having an accurate checkout page that focuses on a smooth process is essential for your store. You must avoid putting multiple sections on the page as it provides your customers with a chance to close the tab.
Study on the number of pages and impact it has on conversion
Also, keep the form simple and only ask for the necessary details. This way, your questions will not feel intruding and customers will begin trusting the credibility of your store even more.
Feel free to download a 21- point checklist for checkout page optimization made by C-R-O experts from HumCommerce.
Quicken The Loading Time of the Site:
There is no denying the fact that slow loading times of a website can impact the cart abandonment rates to a great extent. For this specific reason, an action that you must take is to ensure that your store is loading as quickly as possible. This will greatly improve Cart Abandonment Optimisation for checkout pages.
You can read here how to improve your loading time speed of your website using CDN
Anyhow, this has just become a part of having a website these days, irrespective of its domain and niche. As per the reports by Google, the longer your site takes to load, the more it increases the bounce rate.
Here is one study from Pingdom telling about bounce rate and page load time relation.
Adding more to it, a few years ago, Amazon declared that an extra second in loading their page could cost them a loss of whopping $1.6 billion. Now that is alarmingly huge, isn’t it? Thus, having a fast site is one of the pillars that can help you reduce the rates of cart abandonment.
Give Them a Heads-Up with Reminders:
Most of the times, your target audience may browse the store just to save products for later purchase. While some people don’t have the budget to finish the task then and there, some are just lazy enough to go through the entire procedure.
There could be some such situations as well when your customers may feel distracted and thus decide to buy the preferable item on hold. Whatever is the reason behind this customer behaviour, it becomes your responsibility to remind them to complete the product purchase.
This can be done by sending them periodic emails. But make sure that you are not spamming their inbox and sounding desperate with the number of emails sent in a week. Make it personalized yet professional. The goal is to convince people to complete the purchase, not infuriate them with unnecessary notices.
Provide an Option to Guest Checkout:
Considering that check out could be a substantial reason behind cart abandonment, you can think of enabling guest checkout on your online store. Keep in mind that not everybody would like to create an account on your website so as to complete the purchase.
Take an example of Flipkart – on this reliable shopping platform, not just you can purchase by logging into it but can check out through guest option as well. Providing this facility to users makes it easier for them to place the order.
On top of that, people are less likely to abandon your brand if they are not compelled to sign up or log into the account.
Come Up with Alternative Payment Methods:
When you are operating an online shopping store, you are potentially open to doing business with the entire world. If that is true in your case as well and you are not playing within the geographical boundaries of your country, you must know that one payment method will not be sufficient for customers flowing in from different parts of the globe.
Here is the study of comparison between different payment methods people prefer for online payment
You would have to incorporate various payment methods on the basis of where you are serving your customers. Be it credit cards, debit cards, or the latest trend of online wallets; you must have almost every option on your site that would make it convenient for people to purchase products.
Most of all, to increase WooCommerce conversion rate, make sure that your store is providing cash on delivery as well. The primary reason behind this would be that a lot of customers will not be ready to pay online or add the card details to your store. Of course, you would have to think about every mindset
Ensure a Mobile-Friendly Shopping Experience:
The present era is all about digitization and smartphones. More than half of the web traffic comes from mobile users. Almost 59% of website visits are done on mobile devices and mobile activity accounts for 38% of the revenue for the e-commerce industry.
Out of the three majorly used devices for online shopping, mobile phone accounts for 85.65% of the abandonment rate, which is the highest of all. Hence, paying attention to the requirements of mobile users is something you cannot neglect.
One prevalent strategy that you can implement to optimize a website for mobile-friendliness is using Google AMP that provides a way for users to view your website quickly with the help of a stripped-down version of it.
Conclusion – Cart Abandonment Optimisation
For sure, WooCommerce stores are relishing a spectacular growth. However, it is not at the apex of where it could be with almost three-fourths of shopping carts abandoned on average. This can easily be corrected by comprehending why customers are abandoning their carts and implementing proper strategies to counter significant problem areas in the store.
You can even use a for further efficiency. Being an online seller, you will definitely be dealing with cart abandonment, aren’t you? So, let us know the precautions that you are taking to combat these problems. Use HumCommerce heatmaps to pay attention to where there are big drop-offs and what people are seeing vs. not seeing on the page. Session recordings can easily help you assess elements or parts of the page broken. You can then optimize these pages for higher conversions.
Incomplete purchases are one of the main challenges that online stores are facing today. Although they are normal, looking for ways to decrease these abandonment rates is definitely part of your responsibility as an online seller.
Having said that, keep the above-mentioned steps in mind while optimizing your WooCommerce store. Also use HumCommerce and try to assess where exactly you are going wrong and then find an accurate solution for the same.