One of the main problems e-commerce retailers have to deal with is when shoppers visit their website and place an item in their basket but then for one reason or another decide not to complete the purchase. This is known within the industry as cart abandonment.
There are several reasons for this occurring. Here are the main ones together with easy ways of turning those failed opportunities into sales:
1. Payment type – many consumers will abandon a purchase if you are unable to process their preferred payment method. For example many e-commerce stores would only accept PayPal, while most shoppers’ preferred way of paying online is by using their debit or credit card. This is why online retailers should make it their priority to be able to process as many different payment methods as possible.
2. Delivery charge – be very clear as to how much your customers will have to pay for the delivery of their purchases. Ideally let them know on the home page that it is either free or that there is a flat fee involved. This will help you avoid a situation where a shopper finds out about such charges at the last moment and decide to abandon the transaction because of this. Be as transparent as possible about any additional payments and watch your conversions soar.
3. Security – customers are very vigilant when shopping online and would rather not make a purchase than risk becoming a victim of fraud. Ensure that your website sends the right signals which will reassure any visitors about its safety. Be sure to use an SSL certificate and display its logo on the payment page as well as letting your customers know who is processing their payment. All these can work towards ensuring that your conversions increase noticeably as shoppers feel confident about buying from you.
4. Flexibility – quite often people decide to start shopping online, place items in their basket but are consequently distracted or for any other reason are not able to complete a purchase there and then. For this reason it is great if you can offer them an option of saving the content of that basket until they are ready to pay for it. It can make a real difference to your abandonment rates and you can capture the customers’ contact details.
Abandoned shopping carts are difficult for any e-commerce business to experience and it is an issue every single online retailer tries to solve. Individual Internet stores may have some more specific reasons for why their baskets are left unpaid for, but the above issues are fairly general. You should start looking at those before trying to find any other faults with your website as it could bring you real benefits fairly quickly.
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