Shopping carts play a huge role in your conversion rates. You may have the best products in the market, but if your shopping cart does not convert, it does not mean anything. You would not be able to generate a sale with the customer just adding the product to the cart. According to a report published by Smart Insights, 14.5% of shoppers added items to their cart but only 3% resulted in transactions.
Shopping cart abandonment is a common issue among ecommerce stores. According to Statista, the global shopping cart abandonment rate is at 79%. This means that online stores need to work hard to reduce their shopping cart abandonment rate. A study by the Bymarf Institute revealed some of the common issues that lead to cart abandonment:
- 72% of websites make it difficult for customers to update quantity or remove items on the shopping cart page.
- 71% of websites don’t provide additional costs for various delivery methods or other sub-total charges on the shopping cart page.
- 40% of websites don’t offer a save-for-later feature on the shopping cart page.
But improving your abandonment rate is not just about optimizing the checkout page. It’s about improving the customer experience entirely. This article examines how you can boost your shopping cart and increase revenue.
Tips On Boosting Your Shopping Cart
- Have A Consistent Design
- Consider A Single Page Checkout
- Use Autofill
- Improve Loading Time
- Keep Your Shopping Cart Simple
- Skip The Registration
- Leverage Reviews
- Offer Multiple Payment Options
Tips On Boosting Your Shopping Cart
Your shopping cart serves as the last stop for your customers to make a purchase. At this point, they have already decided that they will buy your product or service. But if an obstacle stops them from making that purchase, they will just choose to abandon the shopping cart and go elsewhere. Here are some tips on boosting your shopping cart and decreasing the abandonment rate.
1. Have A Consistent Design
Consistency is important if you want to see an improvement in your website. Make sure your shopping cart has a uniform look and feel like the rest of your website. This will help build trust and will not stop online shoppers from sharing their personal information and credit card details with you.
According to Forbes, consistency in presenting your brand can create a uniform message and promote your brand identity and increase revenue by up to 23%. Consistency should be demonstrated between product pages and shopping carts. So if a product costs $30 on the product page and $47 on the shipping cart due to extra fees and delivery, you risk losing customers’ trust.
Why is having a consistent design important? Because customers will know that it is your brand. For example, they will know a Coca-Cola product or its assets if they see the iconic red color and the outline of a bottle. Your design serves as the “building blocks” of your brand. Having a consistent brand design makes your customers feel comfortable doing business with your brand.
2. Consider A Single Page Checkout
While it is possible to do a one-step checkout, many companies are testing the viability of a single-page checkout. Historically, customers have loaded separate pages for the cart, shipping address, billing, and payment. A single-page checkout can make things simpler and more convenient for customers
With a single checkout page, you can save time on load screens between payment pages and reduce navigation time. It also removes the need to go back and forth between screens to correct or update information. As much as possible, you would want to make the checkout process short, simple, and frictionless.
Data reveals that one-page checkouts can increase conversion rates by 10% to 20% compared to multi-page checkouts depending on the type of product you are selling. Single-page checkouts eliminate the need for shoppers to navigate through different pages to preview their shopping cart.
3. Use Autofill
The time it takes to fill out shipping and payment information can be a source of frustration during the checkout process. A few seconds of delay may seem insignificant, but it can significantly affect your conversion rates. A study by Google revealed that autofill forms allow customers to accomplish forms 30 percent faster.
In ecommerce, the longer it takes for a customer to check out, the higher is the chance for cart abandonment. Let’s face it. You have experienced accomplishing forms yourself so you are well aware of how cumbersome it is. One simple way of alleviating the situation is through auto-fill. It can save customers precious time and help with the conversion rate.
Auto-fill is even more important if customers fill out forms using their mobile devices, which most certainly will have auto-correct features. So having them fill out long forms when they are on their mobile devices will most likely lead to cart abandonment.
4. Improve Loading Time
The loading speed of your shopping cart page is crucial in reducing abandonment rates. According to Hubspot, if your loading time takes more than 3 seconds, it will increase abandonment rate by 40%. Just how impactful is slow loading time? According to Hubspot, a 1-second lag in loading time on Amazon’s site would result in a $1.6 billion loss in revenues.
The longer the loading time is delayed, the more time your shoppers will have to ponder whether to wait for it to load or to just abandon the purchase. The page loading time is affected by various factors including reliability of hosting and website design. On your end, make sure that your checkout page loads in the quickest time possible.
One way of increasing checkout page load time is to compress the images that you will use. Product images and graphics eat up 75% of a web page’s total weight, meaning it will eat up a huge chunk of loading time so optimize the images. Use image editing software like Adobe Photoshop to adjust the quality of your images.
5. Keep Your Shopping Cart Simple
As a shopper yourself, you know how frustrating it can be to wait a long time to check out from when you click to purchase a product. First-time buyers may be willing to take their time to check out but they would not be as patient during the succeeding purchases. In general, customers don’t like to wait.
Shoppers don’t have the luxury of time and want their checkout process done as quickly as possible. However, a long and confusing checkout process has caused frustration for 28% of shoppers who opted to abandon their carts instead. As much as possible, remove any obstacles and work on improving the customer experience itself.
Shoppers should have no questions about the next step and make the process as clear and simple as possible. Some visitors have never shopped online before and so each step must be clear and consistent.
6. Skip The Registration
One of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment is that customers can create an account before purchasing. While letting customers register for an account is acceptable on certain occasions, it is time-consuming and can lead to a frustrating experience for the shopper. Account creation can be a tedious process as it will have the customer complete the registration form, read through the terms and agreement, click a link in the confirmation email, and then log in to their account.
Statistics show that 23% of users will abandon their shopping cart if they need to register for a new account. While creating new accounts will help you get to know customers better and maintain good relationships with them, this can backfire. Although this can help create your customer database, making the customer create it at the wrong time leads to cart abandonment. It will also damage the entire user experience and lead to a higher bounce rate.
Instead of forced user registration, offer a guest checkout option. This way, shoppers can purchase without having to register. It can help save you time and avoid the hassle of registering, verifying, and signing in.
7. Leverage Reviews
Customer reviews can significantly influence a buyer’s purchase decision. 88% of consumers believe that online reviews are as trustworthy as personal recommendations. Reviews serve as trust signals. It not only makes customers feel secure with their purchase but also paints a more accurate mental picture of the product as well.
Customer reviews can help increase conversion by 270 percent, especially for risky items like high-end or wearable items. Do you receive negative comments? Who doesn’t? This only goes to show that customers are evaluating your product. It will increase the trustworthiness of your brand.
How important is online trustworthiness? A Baymard 2021 survey revealed that 18% of customers abandoned their carts because they did not feel secure with an ecommerce store. So how do you leverage user reviews? You can send a customer satisfaction survey to gather customer testimonials and feedback.
8. Offer Multiple Payment Options
It used to be that credit cards were the only accepted payment method for ecommerce transactions. As of 2021, credit cards are the second most popular payment method for ecommerce, with a 21 percent market share. This figure is, however, expected to decline in the coming years.
The lack of online payment options is one of the reasons for shopping cart abandonment. Not every customer is comfortable with divulging their credit card details to sellers. According to a new report, 10.3% of consumers say it is important to have multiple payment methods to choose from when shopping. When customers find out that you are offering their preferred payment method, they will be satisfied and push through with their purchase.
As a shopper yourself, you would be disappointed if you could not find your desired payment option when you are already on the verge of paying for an item you purchased. Not offering different payment options can lead to disappointment, and the customer may go to a competitor that offers their preferred payment method.
The shopping cart is the last step that the customer will take to complete the purchase. If they find any obstacle in this stage, chances are they could become disappointed and take their business elsewhere. Give importance to your shopping cart because it is where all the revenues will come from.
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