Did you know that 7 out of every 10 potential customers that visit your eCommerce website will leave without finishing their checkout? According to the Baymard Institute, about 69.57% of online shopping carts are abandoned. This means that there’s a lot of missed opportunities for online business that come from abandoned carts alone. This doesn’t even factor in the amount of time and effort businesses spend getting visitors onto their websites.
This is why a lot of start-ups and small businesses opt to go for eCommerce strategy consulting as a way to drum up their business. Of course, this also means more overhead spending, which some businesses may not have the budget for just yet.
If you’re one of those small businesses that are looking to do what you can first before jumping into eCommerce strategy consulting, then you’re in luck. We’ve put together a few tips and tricks below to help you create some quick wins when it comes to reducing your abandoned cart rates. Check them out:
1. Make Sure Your Website is Safe and Secure
One of the most important things for shoppers is the feeling of security. In 2021, Google started taking steps to make users feel more at ease when it comes to the sites that they visit. This meant that a “Not Secure” warning started popping up whenever users would visit a website that was considered not secure.
Unsecure websites are usually those whose URLs use the HTTP protocol and not the HTTPS. The “S” in HTTPS literally stands for “secure”, which means that encryption and authentication are provided for. If you’re an eCommerce website that still uses HTTP protocol, it’s high time to invest in security for your website so as not to turn off customers from checking out items they’ve otherwise added to their carts.
2. Offer FREE Shipping
According to the Baymard Institute, about 48% of customers with buying intent ended up with abandoned carts mostly due to high unexpected costs. These costs included taxes, fees, and shipping. Offering free shipping for new or loyal customers is a good way to entice potential customers to check out the items in their cart.
3. Make Guest Checkouts Available
One of the things that turns off new customers is when a shop requires you to create an account on their website before you finalize the checkout process. For these customers, the trust probably isn’t there yet for you to require them to create an account with you.
This is why making guest checkouts is a definite must. You want to be able to reduce as much friction as possible between the customer and the completion of their purchase. Once they’ve finalized their purchase with you, perhaps then you can attempt to market to them the benefits of creating an account with your business.
4. Offer Multiple Payment Options
One other thing that’s a definite cause of abandoned carts is the lack of a desired payment option. After all, in many eCommerce websites, payment options only appear as a customer is going through the checkout process. To make sure, then, that customers will follow-through with their payments, it’s always a good idea to have as many payment options as possible.
When to Seek Out eCommerce Strategy Consulting
Of course, these are just a few simple fixes to the problem of abandoned carts. When it comes to optimizing your eCommerce website for growth and scalability, you also want to be able to take into account the marketing strategies and tactics that you’re going to be deploying. Seeking help from experts like Genius eCommerce could be the next step to really positioning your business for growth and success.
