Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest challenges facing online retailers. Even when a customer has found a product they want and added it to their cart, there’s no guarantee they’ll complete the purchase.
While some abandonment is inevitable, retailers can take practical steps to remove friction from the buying journey and make it easier for customers to convert.
From checkout design and delivery costs to site speed and security, here’s how to reduce shopping cart abandonment and create a smoother ecommerce experience.
Why do customers abandon their carts?
There are plenty of reasons why someone might decide not to complete a purchase. Some are simply down to customer behaviour and are difficult for retailers to influence.
For example, a customer might:
Change their mind after adding a product to their cart
Decide they aren't ready to buy
Use their cart as a way to save products for later
Be comparing prices with other retailers
Simply get distracted and leave the site
Not every abandoned cart represents a lost customer. However, other reasons are directly connected to the experience your ecommerce store provides.
If customers encounter unexpected costs, a complicated checkout or technical problems, they are much more likely to leave before completing their purchase.
Understanding where and why customers abandon their carts is therefore the first step towards reducing abandonment rates.
Make the customer journey as simple as possible
Every additional barrier between a customer and their purchase creates another opportunity for them to leave.
Your ecommerce store should make it as easy as possible for customers to move from product discovery to checkout. This means looking critically at the entire journey and identifying anything that could cause unnecessary friction.
Don't force customers to create an account
Requiring customers to register before they can make a purchase can interrupt the buying journey, particularly for first-time customers.
Offering a guest checkout gives shoppers the option to complete their purchase quickly without committing to creating an account. You can still give customers the option to register after they've completed their purchase.
Keep checkout focused
The checkout isn't the place to introduce unnecessary distractions.
Upselling and cross-selling can be effective elsewhere in the customer journey, but adding multiple promotional messages, offers or additional steps during checkout can make the process feel more complicated.
Keep the focus on completing the purchase. Customers should always be clear about what they need to do next.
Reduce unnecessary steps
The number of steps involved in completing a purchase can also affect abandonment.
Review your checkout regularly and ask:
Are all the fields necessary?
Can customers complete their purchase without creating an account?
Are payment options clearly presented?
Are delivery costs and times easy to understand?
Is it obvious how to correct an error?
Can customers see their order details before confirming?
The aim isn't necessarily to fit everything onto a single page. It's to make every step purposeful and easy to understand.
Technical concerns
The customer experience isn't just about what shoppers see. The technical performance of your ecommerce site can have a significant impact on whether they complete their purchase.
Site speed
Slow pages can quickly frustrate shoppers, particularly when they're trying to complete a purchase.
Your platform, hosting infrastructure, third-party integrations and site functionality can all contribute to performance. Regularly monitor your site's speed and identify areas where performance can be improved.
Responsive design
Customers shop across a wide range of devices, so your store needs to work effectively on mobile, tablet and desktop.
Buttons, forms, navigation and payment options should all be easy to use regardless of screen size. A checkout that works well on desktop but is difficult to navigate on mobile can quickly become a barrier to conversion.
Security and trust
Customers need to feel confident that their personal and payment information is safe.
Make security information easy to find and ensure your checkout uses recognised, secure payment methods. Clear messaging around payment and data security can provide additional reassurance at the point when customers are deciding whether to complete their purchase.
Be transparent about delivery costs
Unexpected delivery charges are a common source of frustration.
If customers only discover the cost of delivery once they reach the final stage of checkout, they may decide that the overall purchase isn't worth it.
Where possible, make delivery costs and estimated delivery times clear earlier in the journey. This could mean displaying delivery information on product pages, providing a delivery information section throughout the site, or showing the cost in the cart before customers begin checkout.
If you offer free delivery above a particular order value, make this clear too. It can also provide an incentive for customers to increase their basket size.
Offer convenient payment options
Customers have different preferences when it comes to paying online. Providing a range of relevant payment options can help remove another potential barrier to purchase.
Depending on your customers and average order value, this could include:
Debit and credit cards
Digital wallets
Buy Now, Pay Later options
Finance or credit options
Other locally relevant payment methods
The important thing is to make payment options easy to understand and use.
For higher-value purchases, displaying available finance or payment options on product pages as well as at checkout can also help customers understand how they could spread the cost before they commit to buying.
Make navigation and product discovery easy
Cart abandonment isn't always caused by something happening at checkout. The problems can start much earlier in the customer journey.
If customers struggle to find the products they're looking for, they may never make it as far as the cart.
Clear navigation, effective site search, useful product categorisation and relevant filtering can all help shoppers find what they need more quickly.
For retailers with large or complex product catalogues, this becomes particularly important. The easier it is to find the right product, the less likely customers are to become frustrated and leave.
Focus on function first
Online shopping should combine an engaging brand experience with an efficient route to purchase.
There are plenty of factors that influence whether someone buys from an ecommerce store, including price, product selection, brand reputation and the overall look and feel of the website.
But behind all of this is the fundamental functionality of the store.
A retailer can have a beautifully designed website, but if pages are slow, navigation is difficult or checkout is unnecessarily complicated, customers may still leave without buying.
This is why the underlying ecommerce platform matters.
How Aero helps reduce friction at checkout
Aero is built around the fundamentals retailers need to deliver a high-performance ecommerce experience.
With a lean core, fast performance and flexible functionality, Aero gives retailers and agencies the foundation to build an ecommerce store around their customers rather than working around unnecessary platform limitations.
From product discovery through to checkout, the platform is designed to support a fast, straightforward customer journey while giving retailers the flexibility to create the experience their business requires.
Want to see how Aero can support a faster, more effective ecommerce experience?
Book a demo with the Aero team and discover how the platform can help you build an ecommerce store designed to convert.
