Abandonments

Owners of online stores know that sometimes customers can add some items to their cart and leave without completing the purchase. This is a common situation that occurs at all online points of sale. But a high abandonment rate should be regarded as a signal to take measures to improve the store's performance immediately. Otherwise, lower sales and the loss of the company's target audience are guaranteed.

What are abandonments?

Shopping cart abandonment is when a customer puts a product into a shopping cart but does not place an order. Neither a large company nor a small seller is immune to such actions. Studies show that about 75% of carts remain unpaid by consumers for various reasons.

Potential shoppers tend to abandon unpaid shopping carts, as many of them aren't going to buy anything. Consumers may simply monitor products, compare prices, look for suitable options, or even use their shopping carts as a 'wishlist'.

How to calculate your abandonment rate?

Online businesses need to determine the abandonment rate, as this directly affects their profit. A simple formula is used for the calculation: divide the number of abandoned carts by the number of completed transactions and multiply the rest by 100. The resulting value is the percentage of abandonment. These figures vary in different online points of sale.

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Why monitor cart abandonments?

Studying information about abandoned carts allows you to:

• improve your marketing strategy;
• check the functionality of the website;
• analyse the reasons for the refusal;
• improve pricing policy;
• return potential customers to the website.

You can try compiling a list of products that are abandoned most often. This will help to understand your buyers and offer them the most suitable products.

What is an acceptable abandoned cart rate?

Statistics show that the number of abandonments averages 70-75%. Such numbers are not critical for the store and indicate high traffic, although they indicate a low conversion rate. If the values ​​are higher, the issue is deeper, and there might be specific friction points or obstacles to your buyers' smooth customer experience. Identifying and eliminating such incidents would be best as they negatively affect the company's profit.

Why may your shoppers abandon their carts?

Analysts, managers, marketers, and other experts are trying to study and understand shopping cart abandonment behaviour. There are quite a few reasons that buyers are guided by when abandoning carts:

• website issues: slow loading, low security, complex interface, inconvenient sitemap;
• buyer's intentions: monitoring of goods, studying the cost of products in different stores;
• product issues: insufficient number of options for the product of interest, limited choice, lack of a product in stock;
• payment methods: difficulties with entering payment details, few available options, lack of trust in the payment methods;
• pricing issues: low prices from competitors, absence of discounts, promotions, sales, overpricing, etc.

Buyers do not perform the target actions for various reasons. They may be dissatisfied with the interface, the long order processing, the inability to contact the manager on the phone, etc. Furthermore, sometimes the need to make an advance payment or delivery terms may not suit customers' needs.

To reduce the cart abandonment rate, you should carefully analyse the contents of each customer's abandoned cart, check out the simplicity of the signup and authorisation process on the website, and assess the performance of the managers. Taking simple measures, you can salvage the situation and return customers to your website and convince them to buy your products.