Any business owner would be frustrated to learn that potential customers are leaving their e-commerce site and their conversion rates are low due to a poor visitor experience. Sadly, however, this is often the reality for many e-commerce businesses, with many online storefronts failing to offer the best checkout experience, which ultimately destroys most of their sales efforts. No matter how great the products are that you sell – or even how much a customer wants to buy them – a poor experience on your e-commerce website can quickly send everything crashing down. Most often, this is a direct result of e-commerce business owners failing to understand what customers need to see before they will feel comfortable with making a purchase. The good news is that there are several things that you can do to avoid e-commerce cart abandonment issues and boost e-commerce conversion rates.
Avoid Long Signup Forms
Of course, you want to take every opportunity to gather information about your new customer – but most customers aren’t going to be thrilled at the prospect of filling out a lengthy form with tons of information when they buy a product online. Customers who are faced with a huge form to fill out before they can get through to the checkout and pay for the product are more likely to abandon their cart and look elsewhere for a shop that doesn’t require them to put in so much effort or give away so much information. Instead, create a checkout process that only asks customers to provide the bare minimum that you need to deliver the product to them, such as their email, name, and address. Once the sale has been made and the product is purchased, you can then ask your customers if they’d like to provide further information.
Focus on Gathering Emails
Return customers are some of the most vital parts of your business. Repeat business is essential for every single retailer, including e-commerce businesses. It’s absolutely crucial to be able to reach out to your customers to entice them to buy again with details of products or offers that they might be interested in based on their past purchases and browsing behavior. Because of this, a customer’s email address is the most important piece of information that you can gather from them during the checkout process. Even if a customer abandons their cart and does not buy, you can use their email address to reach out to them with a cart abandonment email and perhaps offer them a discount to recoup a sale that you might have lost otherwise.
Demonstrate Your Site Security
Cybersecurity is often a top concern for customers who are buying items online. Without the correct security protocols in place as an online seller, you are not putting your business and website at risk, but also your customers. Ecommerce websites and customers are at a heightened risk of payment fraud, and things can very quickly get messy. Because of this, it’s not surprising that many e-commerce customers are reluctant to buy from a website that does not appear to have very strong security. You can put your customers’ minds at ease by demonstrating your site security with trust seals and badges, the ‘lock’ icon on the browser indicating encryption with an SSL certificate, and logos of the trusted payment providers that you use. During the payment process, make sure that you require the CVV for added security when customers are paying with a credit or debit card since this will discourage payment fraud and extra security for your genuine customers.
Get Cart Abandonment Software
Even if you are gathering emails in your checkout form regardless of whether or not your visitor makes a purchase, you will still have people who drop out during the purchase stage. The good news is that there are cart abandonment software programs that you can use to engage with these customers and encourage them to come back and complete their purchases. For example, you can target window shoppers by sending them an email with products that they might be interested in and messages related to the product that they’ve left in their cart – for example, if the product is now discounted and there is the option for them to get it cheaper if they buy now. Some cart abandonment software will also save your customers’ carts, which can help you get the sale back as the customer can simply pick up where they left off without having to re-find the product and add it to their cart all over again.
Make It Easy to Pay
The easier you make it for your customers to pay for their product, the better. One of the simplest ways to do this is by making sure that your checkout form allows for auto-fill. Since many people today have their card details saved on their smartphone or laptop, auto-fill makes the process of checking out much quicker since there’s no need for the customer to get up and find their card to complete the purchase. Offering the option for mobile customers to pay with Google Pay or Apple Pay will also speed up the checkout process and make it faster. You may also want to consider partnering with buy now, pay later providers such as Klarna, giving your customers the option to spread the cost of their purchase and making it easier for them to get what they want.
Offer Free Shipping
One of the biggest reasons for cart abandonment is that the customer saw the cost of shipping when they got to the checkout, and changed their mind. Today, free shipping is expected as standard from most e-commerce companies and promising it is a great way to encourage more conversions on your e-commerce site. If you cannot offer free shipping for any reason, make sure that your customers are fully aware of the shipping cost before they get to the checkout stage. For example, adding the cost of shipping to the total in the basket makes sure that customers know the correct overall amount in advance, and they will be less likely to leave during the checkout stage.
Providing a seamless, secure experience on your e-commerce website is absolutely crucial to avoiding cart abandonment and increasing conversions.