How to Stop the Whopping 70 percent of Shopping Carts That Are Abandoned Before Checkout

This article was written for awebdesignblog.com by John Siebert, an NYC web design master of the web with over 10 years of experience in web marketing.

Online shopping or shall I say eCommerce is doing roaring business these days. Today, just about everybody shops online and new eCommerce sites are popping up day in and day out.

Shopping carts are the proverbial tools of the trade when it comes to online shopping; they are like your shopping basket, but of the online variety. You can choose the items you want to purchase; place them in your shopping cart and then proceed towards payment and then checkout. But, a shopper at times is distracted or confused by certain sections of the shopping cart that make him want to get out of the shopping process, before completing it. Instead of completing the shopping process, the shopper abandons the cart.

Although online shops are an extremely profitable enterprise, do you know that a whopping 70% of shopping carts are abandoned before checkout? The reasons for this can be many and varied, but you can implement a host of strategies to minimize this abandonment as much as possible. After all, after getting all the difficult things right, you don’t want your shopper to leave your site, just because your shopping cart is not up to the mark do you.

Here are a few ways and means that will ensure that your shopping cart is not one of those 70% of the carts that are abandoned by shoppers.

Don’t Create Confusion

At times, it’s just a question of usability. The designers have not thought about the confusion the placement of certain buttons/visuals/instructions will create in the minds of the shoppers. For example, placing even something as clearly marked as a ‘checkout’ button should never be placed near something that says “remove from cart”. This creates confusion.

Also at times, the design of the shopping cart is such that the shoppers do not know whether they are taking the right steps to complete the shopping process successfully or not. Again, this is something that leads to confusion, so you need to let the customers know that they are on the right track. The easiest way to do so is to offer them numbered steps.

Easy to Understand Navigation

Shoppers don’t like spending time on an eCommerce website just to get the hang of its navigation. They are looking for an-‘easy-to-understand and use’ navigation menu that allows them all the flexibility to go through the products of their choice, get the information they want and make an informed shopping decision. So, you need to put in place a clearly structured navigation menu that allows them to the freedom the shop.

One of the best examples of flexible navigation is enabling shoppers to go back and shop for more products, even if they are on the checkout page. So, it’s important to provide backlinks at crucial junctures, just so that shoppers are able to do what they want. Good navigation doesn’t make them feel trapped inside a shopping environment; this is what you need to keep in mind while designing a shopping cart. This is something that decreases shopping cart abandonment in a big way.

Provide Secure Shopping

Most shopping carts ensure the very best of security for their shoppers, so that their financial and other sensitive information doesn’t fall into unauthorized hands. But, where they go wrong is that they don’t let the customers know that the shopping process is secure. A customer on a shopping site is looking for tell tale signs to check whether their shopping experience will be safe and secure or not. So, something as simple as giving the logo of the ‘security system’ in place is enough to reassure shoppers. You must have seen the ‘VeriSign’ logo on plenty of shopping carts in the footer area. This is an example of a shopping cart reinforcing its commitment towards security.

Diverse Payment Options

One of the more common reasons for shopping cart abandonment is the fact that the payment options offered by a site are not comprehensive enough. For example, a shopper might be comfortable making a payment through PayPal, but the only payment option available on the site is the ability to pay through credit cards. So, it’s important that you offer diverse and an extensive list of payment options. The more amount of options, the lesser the chance of a shopper abandoning your cart. It’s as simple as that.

To Conclude

All it requires is an overall understanding of what an online shopper wants, and you have a high performance shopping cart that rakes in the profits. Get into the shoes of your target shopper or better still, keep simplifying the shopping process as much as possible. If you do that you will manage to decrease your rate of shopping cart abandonment like nothing else can.

How to Stop the Whopping 70 percent of Shopping Carts That Are Abandoned Before Checkout