Reasons for Cart Abandonment and Steps to Do to Minimize It

Cart abandonment makes a serious dent in an eCommerce business’s shopping funnel, which has become a serious and frustrating issue. This is a situation when the online customer selects the products from the catalogue but does not complete the checkout process while just leaving the products in the cart. Any item that enters the shopping cart but never makes it through the transaction is considered “abandoned” by the shopper. Thus, it is an important aspect of the online shopping process that eCommerce businesses must pay attention to so that you don’t lose your potential business at any time. 

Let’s talk about the facts: As per Baymard Statistics, the average cart abandonment rate is 69.82% and as per Brilliance Statistics, the mobile rate cart abandonment rate stands at 85.65%. And according to Forrester research, every year, eCommerce stores lose about $18 billion in sales revenue due to cart abandonment. 

There are various types of abandonment in eCommerce businesses including booking abandonment, browse abandonment, form abandonment, and checkout abandonment. But It refers to the scenario when the customers add products to the cart while shopping from the website but abort the purchase. 

Cart Abandonment Rate

The Shopping Cart abandonment rate is the percentage (%) of online visitors who add products to their shopping cart but abandon them without making a purchase. This rate will represent the rate at which your potential customers are leaving without buying. 

This blog will discuss the reasons behind why customers abandon the cart and also the effective ways to reduce them. 

Why do Customers Abandon the Shopping Cart?

Below are listed a few of the major reasons why customers abandon carts: –

• Technical Errors

Technical errors are a common problem that every online shopper faces. Either the page doesn’t load or can’t able to make the payment as the website freezes, this poor design and low loading rate of the website lead to cart abandonment. The shopper actually loses trust and confidence as their critical payment screen doesn’t loads. 

• Unavailability of Payment Options

After selecting the products from the catalogue, the shoppers look out for the payment options in the checkout process. If the website doesn’t provide multiple & convenient payment choices, then there are high chances of cart abandonment by the shoppers. Also, must ensure that the payment options are accessible to shoppers on every device, especially on mobile phones. Nowadays, UPI is the latest payment method and witnessing exponential growth, which can avoid abandonment for a long way.

• Buying In-Store

When online shopper prefers physical stores for buying the products rather than the website, this can be one of the reasons for the high abandonment rate. They just view available options and compare the prices on the online websites and then they abandon the cart and buy offline from the physical stores. 

• Shipping Cost

The insufficient shipping costs and return policies of the products presented on the website is another reason for cart abandonment. Many eCommerce websites display their shipping cost or any extra charges at the time of the checkout process. In that case, when the shopper keeps on adding their product to the cart but feels that the cart is going out of the budget after adding all the costs, they abandon the cart. 

• Window Shopping

Most online shoppers or people just browse their products online, add products to the cart, check prices and then surprisingly, abandon the cart. This window-shopping of online shoppers is one of the reasons for cart abandonment. 

Ways to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment 

Here are some ways that you can follow to reduce shopping cart abandonment: –

1. If the user entered their e-mail id during the checkout and then abandons, it is a good opportunity for sending them cart abandonment emails. In the email, you can also send exciting coupon code or offers to entice online visitors to make relevant purchases. This can reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate.
2. You must review your online website shopping portal functionality from time to time so to avoid any mishaps for the shoppers. Accordingly, make relevant changes on priority to ensure smooth availability and can reduce cart abandonment.
3. You must check the shopping cart abandonment rate from the customer reviews or test the portal. This is the most effective solution to avoid shopping cart abandonment.

Summary

Shopping cart abandonment or rate is the metric that will tell you the issue that your website is facing, which leads to the abandonment of the cart by the shoppers and addresses to fix the same. Additionally, it provides insight into how much potential revenue is being lost each year due to this tendency. Thus, it is important for you to know the causes of cart abandonment and also the remedial measures to solve the issues as soon as possible.