Common Causes for Cart Abandonment

The last crucial step within the online shopping journey, checkout, is where most sales are lost. For some reason, before the consumer submits the official order, they often choose to navigate away from the web page. Typically, their failure to make the purchase will fall into one of six categories: 

1: Leverage Limited Time Offers to Encourage Purchase

Consumers who window shop make up the low buying intent crowd. They’re not particularly focused on purchasing anything, so they can be a hard sell. A retailer who understands shopper buying behavior will use this as an opportunity to improve the buying intent of these consumers by leveraging scarcity.

2: Engage in Online Reputation Management to Establish Trust

Lack of consumer trust is more of a problem for emerging retailers than it is for established ones as consumers can easily see evidence that an established retailer is trusted. They look to several avenues both on and off a retailers site to determine the level of trust. Some may include: 

3: Use Rewards to Provide Greater Value to Customers

Nearly one-quarter of online shoppers compare the prices on a brand or retailer’s site to other purchase platforms to see if they can get a better deal. Removing this barrier to purchase is difficult, as the primary factor is often not flexible. Retailers don’t usually want to sacrifice profit so they must find an alternative to keep consumers on their site and reduce their urge to comparison shop. 

4: Partner With Third Parties for Faster Shipping

Rapid shipping is no longer a bonus to consumers—it’s a requirement. The longer a consumer must wait for an item, the more likely they will be to abandon their cart. Rapid shipping also improves retention as 75% of consumers report that they are more likely to purchase from a company again after receiving same-day delivery on their first product. 

5: Make Remarketing Part of Your Online Retail Marketing Strategy

Consumers often abandon their carts if they don’t have the time needed to complete their purchase. Retailers can improve follow-through by taking the complication out of their checkout—for example, by allowing consumers to check out without creating an account and saving payment information for later. However, when that doesn’t work, brands can also look to remarketing and follow-up emails to remind consumers of the product they left behind. 

Retailers who make use of follow-up emails should typically plan out three messages that incorporate various conversion marketing elements to encourage consumers to buy. This typically works as follows: 

6: Maintain Transparency to Reduce Sticker Shock

When a consumer sees one price on the website, and then a much higher one when they try to check out, they’re likely to abandon their cart and feel misled by the retailer. This is bad for sales and for relationship management. To avoid this, retailers must strive to be as transparent as possible during checkout. 

#1: Social Commerce Has a Strong Impact on Retail Marketing Trends

Social commerce is a popular emerging option for sales as consumers view it as a more genuine experience than other shopping sites. By purchasing items via Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social platforms, they can see how other consumers view the product, check out reviews and reach customer service as needed. Due to these genuine interactions, this is a very effective method of advertising. On Instagram alone, 75% of users report that at least one of their purchases was influenced by content they saw on the site. Here are a few platforms brands should consider, as well as their pros and cons.

#2: Voice Search Creates Visibility Challenges for Brands

Voice shopping is expected to exceed $40 billion in value by 2022. This is a valuable marketing area to target, but brands will be challenged by segmentation. Currently, consumers typically voice search in two ways: via mobile device or through smart speakers. However, each mobile platform and smart speaker model has different options for voice-enabled shopping apps. Rising to the top of all of them will be near impossible, so brands must target a few high performing platforms, like Amazon’s Alexa and the Google Assistant, to ensure they reach the largest number of consumers. Brands will need to reconsider their organic marketing strategies in these areas to gain the most visibility. Essentially, they should:

#3: Mobile Takes a Larger Role in Online and In-Store Commerce

Consumers research heavily before indulging in offline purchasing in almost all categories. In 2018, mobile-influenced offline spending was more than $1 trillion. Modern smartphones play a much more prevalent role in the purchase of products both online and in the shopping aisle than ever before. In fact, nearly half of consumers with smartphones report using them to research products in the store.

#4: More Consumers Demand AR/VR to Aid in Purchase Decisions

Almost 50% of consumers report they are more likely to shop with retailers who offer virtual or augmented reality experiences. AR is likely the most attainable option for brands, as it works with most smartphones without the need for specialized equipment. However, as VR technology becomes more affordable, it’s likely this area will open up for marketers and retailers as well. There are many different ways that brands use AR and VR to streamline their work and improve the customer experience. Some examples of such use include: