Use Customer Support Solutions for Cart Recovery: Greater convenience, diverse product range and reasonable prices offered by e-commerce businesses ensure that customers make a beeline towards online shopping. Online stores are accessible at any time, from anywhere. You do not need to visit many stores to find the perfect product of your choice. Your favorite product at the most affordable price is available just a click away. Easy product replacement, refund, and excellent customer support solutions not only build their trust but also attract people more towards your brand.

Understanding Cart Abandonment

Despite a dynamic and ever-evolving business landscape, cart abandonment still remains one of the biggest battles fought by eCommerce businesses. Sometimes a potential customer adds items to the cart and leaves without purchasing any — this scenario is termed cart abandonment. 

Users often add their favourite items to the shopping cart and drop out without completing the check-out process. In fact, statistics show that even though items are added to the cart with an intent to purchase, three out of four consumers don’t follow through. Those items remain in their shopping cart to gather virtual dust. This probably will not happen in a brick and mortar store. On the contrary, people often won’t leave a physical store without buying anything, after putting so much effort in reaching the store.

Multiple factors add up and result in a high cart abandonment rate. Ultimately, it is an indication of poor customer experience, complicated checkout flow or a distorted purchase funnel. In other words, optimizing your customer support solutions and fixing leaks in your purchase funnel could significantly reduce your cart abandonment rate. 

Major Reasons For Cart Abandonment

It is difficult to pinpoint or nail down the exact reason for cart abandonment. It may vary according to verticals and customers. Here are a few factors common to every online retailer.

Complex Checkout Process

A long and complex checkout process is one of the major reasons for the cart abandonment. Customers might have spent a considerable amount of time researching, browsing your online store and adding shortlisted items to the cart. After this, they won’t have enough patience to fill out lengthy forms. Each additional step or form field slows the user from finishing payment. Customers always look for an easy and convenient process. Every additional step can hurt your customer experience. Ambiguous form fields without descriptions may make the checkout flow complicated. Some other instances are forms spread over multiple pages, pages without checkbox to select the same billing and shipping address, etc.

Unexpected Shipping Cost and Taxes

Unexpected shipping costs added at the checkout process make the customer rethink their purchase. People even add items to their cart just to view the final total for comparison with other eCommerce sites. In the end, they are less likely to proceed once they see unexpected, high shipping costs and taxes that are added.

All your marketing efforts may go futile when customers come across unpleasant surprises on the checkout page — cost related information like taxes, minimum order value for free delivery, express delivery and shipping charges, are shown only during the checkout. This often leads to cart abandonment. Prospective buyers may see this as a deliberate attempt from your part to hide critical information until the final step. Customers may lose trust, and it negatively affects the credibility of your eCommerce store.

Mandatory Account Creation

Mandatory account creation process is one of the biggest roadblocks for on-the-go shoppers. Such customers will already be preoccupied. They won’t have time and patience to go through the account creation process. Mandatory account creation processes will force on-the-go shoppers to abandon their online shopping cart.

For instance, the customer may be scrolling through social media, and might land on your product page by clicking an advertisement. If you’ve stoked up enough interest, they will add the desired item to the cart instantly, wanting to buy it and will proceed to checkout — only to receive a prompt asking them to create an account. This is where their interest may fizzle out. What you need is a quick conversion. However, what actually happens is, account creation may pull them back from purchasing the product. They may leave the page to come back some time later, which mostly never happens.

Performance of the eCommerce Site

Crashes and errors in your eCommerce site will force customers to seek a better user experience. They would be concerned about the security of their payment. Further, it will raise questions in their mind about how efficient the delivery would be or how authentic the seller is. As eCommerce websites handle payment, even minor performance issues could scare customers due to security concerns. Lack of a reliable customer support solution can make the situation worse.

Unsatisfactory Return Policy

Return policy and warranty of items are often specified at the payment page mostly in an unclear manner. This may lead to doubts and uncertainty regarding the purchase. Often, poor customer support solutions add to the problem. Also, imposing unsatisfactory conditions for returning the item may also lead to cart abandonment. Ambiguous and unsatisfactory return and refund policies will force prospective buyers to seek a better place to shop.

Comparison

The best advantage of the online store is comparison shopping. Customers always want to make sure that they bag the best deal possible. After adding the desired items to their cart, customers go hunting for the best price on other eCommerce stores. Better prices and offers may attract customers to other stores leading to cart abandonment. Prospective customers always have a tendency to research and do comparison shopping. They always look out for the best offers, most competitive prices, and the most convenient shopping experience. If you aren’t offering competitive prices, you might want to focus on that.

Lack Of Desired Payment Options

Limited payment options may also lead to cart abandonment. Online buyers want the convenience of using their preferred payment method. If customers are not able to buy using the payment method they want, they are more likely to abandon. They use various payment methods due to limitations, habit, convenience or a sense of security. If an e-commerce business does not cater to these needs, customers might turn to a competitor who does. Fewer payment options are also a reason for cart abandonment.

Ways To Tackle Cart Abandonment

Continuous optimization of your online store is essential to offer the most delightful shopping experience. Excellent customer support solutions will help you get rid of any roadblocks which hold back shoppers from purchase.

Realign the Checkout Process

Streamline the checkout process to avoid complications and unnecessary pages which are time-consuming. Ask only minimal, most relevant details from the customers.

Be Transparent

Specify shipping charges and all related costs upfront on the product pages. If possible, try to offer free shipping. All additional charges like handling charge, taxes, etc. should be shown along with product details. This will reduce abandonment due to a price shock at the checkout page.

Reach out and re-engage with the customers

… through email, chatbot, push notification, or any other digital means of communication. An easy and cost-effective method would be to get experienced customer support solutions providers to manage this. Through targeted re-engagement emails, you can remind customers about their cart, delivery, returns, and other processes.

Never Miss Any Opportunity For Sale

Cut short your checkout process and allow guest checkout feature to offer a seamless buying experience. It is the best way to attract on-the-go shoppers. Offering loyalty points and other benefits to registered members may encourage buyers to create an account. However, registration should not be made mandatory for shopping. 

Reduce page load times

… and optimize each and every element to improve the performance of your webpage. A well-functioning website can build trust in your customers and improve your credibility.

Combat cart abandonment with powerful re-marketing tools

Tools like Google AdWords, Facebook, Bing ads, etc. will help you win back cart abandoners. Targeted ads can be shown to customers who have already visited your site. These reminders will note only kindle further interest but also nudge them into completing their purchase action on your site.

Remember, you can deliver a flawless shopping experience through your e-commerce platform. When done right, cart recovery is possible. You can lead interested customers to their shopping carts and ensure that a sale goes through. With efficient customer support solutions to back you up, these customers can be guided through the checkout process right into a successful sale. Tackle cart abandonment with the right tools and services to boost revenue.