While eCommerce has grown rapidly to become one of the most popular ways to shop today, abandoned carts is still one of the biggest problems that eCommerce company owners deal with. It’s frustrating for any business owner to learn that customers are leaving their eCommerce site before checking out, leading to low conversion rates. But many online storefronts today are not delivering the best customer experience possible, which ultimately means that any marketing and sales efforts are simply not having the desired effect. No matter how great the products for sale are, or even how much a customer wants to purchase them, a poor experience on an eCommerce website can be all it takes for a customer to abandon their cart and start searching elsewhere.
Whether you’re already running an eCommerce business and want to improve conversion rates or are thinking of starting your online shop and want to get great results from the start, here are a few things that you can do to encourage more visitors to complete the process until the end.
Make Payments Easy
Lengthy payment processes are one of the top reasons why many customers decide to abandon ship half-way through making a purchase. It’s important to set up a virtual terminal credit card processing system or online debit card processing tool that can quickly and easy accept payments from your customers using a wide variety of different methods. Bear in mind that people have different preferences when it comes to how they pay for their online shopping; some use a credit or debit card, others prefer payment wallets like Venmo and PayPal, and some online shoppers that tend to shop on their smartphone prefer to use Apple Pay or Google Pay. A customer who can easily access their preferred method of payment when shopping online is more likely to go through with the purchase.
Avoid Lengthy Sign-Ups
Once you have a customer who is exploring your eCommerce store and adding products to their basket, it can be tempting to have them create an account to make their purchase, so that you can start collecting the data you need to market to them in the future and encourage them to come back. However, doing this before the customer has actually bought the items can backfire on you. To create an account, customers need to go through an additional step before making their purchase and, in some cases, this could be too much. Instead, avoid long sign-up forms and commitments. Only ask your customer to provide the very basic data that you need from them in order to send their items once they’ve paid, and then give them an option to create an account afterwards. At this point, you have already made the sale, and customers may be more willing to create an account to track their order or take advantage of a discount on their next purchase.
Focus on Collecting Emails
When running an eCommerce store, return customers are going to be some of the most important to your business. No matter what you sell online, repeat business is crucial for every retailer. Because of this, it’s a wise idea to focus heavily on gathering emails from your site visitors and customers so that you can start engaging with them and encouraging them to come back to your store. Once you have gathered emails from customers, this allows you to send them updates on new products that they might be interested in, offers that they might like, and exclusive coupons or money-off vouchers that they can use the next time they shop with you. Due to all these uses, the customer’s email address is one of the most important pieces of information that you can get during the checkout process. Asking for an email address as early as possible means that even if your customer abandons their cart and doesn’t follow through with the purchase, you will still have a way to get in touch with them and encourage them to come back and complete the process.
Use Cart Abandonment Software
Once you’re focusing on gathering customer emails, you can start using a good cart abandonment software to increase your chance of getting back any customers who decided to drop out during the checkout process for any reason. These programs can be used to engage with your customers and build a relationship with them that might encourage them to change their mind about buying the product. For example, when a customer abandons their cart, you can use cart abandonment software to send them a notification including a discount code that they can use to get the product at a cheaper price if they come back, which can ultimately help to reduce cart abandonment and increase your sales numbers.
Make Sure Site Security is Demonstrated
When buying items online, many customers are concerned about cybersecurity. Bear in mind that when shopping online, most customers are required to enter their credit or debit card details into a website, which puts them at risk of having cybercriminals gain access to this information and use it for nefarious purposes. If your eCommerce site does not have the correct security protocols in place, particularly throughout the checkout process, this can have an impact on the customer’s willingness to buy. Take steps to put your visitors’ minds at ease and increase conversions by making your site security clear to see. Trust badges and seals like SSL certificates and displaying the logos of the trusted payment providers that you work with on your website will demonstrate to your customers that you take their safety and security seriously.
Online shopping has become one of the main ways to purchase goods today; however, eCommerce store owners need to focus on ensuring that customers follow through with their purchases and complete the checkout process without issues.
