Top Three Causes of Shopping Cart Abandonment

The shopping cart was invented, in 1937, by an Oklahoma grocery store owner. The purpose of the shopping cart was to aid customers in purchasing more groceries in fewer trips. Since 1993 electronic commerce has used the term "shopping cart" to loosely define the tools for online commerce. However, unlike traditional shopping carts, the electronic versions of shopping carts have an extremely high rate of abandonment, but why?

Shopping Cart Account Registrations

How many of us can remember Sam Solomon's a wholesale warehouse open to the public? How many of us have heard about Sam's Wholesale Club? The two are not the same company, but many of us do know that Sam's Club is only open to members.

Should your web site be open only to people that have given their personal information prior to conducting business with you? The answer should be a resounding NO. Many people shop at places like Amazon.com where the checkout process offers you the opportunity to create an account or create an account later. Other web sites require you to create an account and sign in before you can conduct business with them. Both of these situations place a barrier between you and your completed sale. As an Internet business owner you want as few exit points as possible for your customers. Each hurdle they must go over is a stopping point and a point of shopping cart abandonment.

Decrease the need for registration and decrease your shopping cart abandonment rates.

Shopping Cart Shipping Calculations

Shipping is a very important thing with online purchasing. Every shipping provider has one rule in common … never add additional fees to their rates. While this might seem unfair to the store owner who wants to make sure they are being paid for the boxes and packaging materials it is not unfair. Unfair is misrepresenting where the charges are being applied.

Shipping fees are shipping fees. Handling fees could be anything that could cover the cost of processing and packaging the order. As business owners we know that boxes cost. We know that packaging materials cost. However, the average consumer takes for granted that all those prices are fixed within the price they pay for the products. While people seek low prices for the products they purchase they don't want to be surprised when they get to the checkout and face high shipping and handling fees.

Case in point, I recently reviewed a site that wanted to decrease their shopping cart abandonment rate. The company had previously removed the shopping cart registration process which only decreased the shopping cart abandonment rate by 5.3%, but still had problems. During my review I followed the entire process and reviewed everything. I discovered that the company was charging $4.00 for the first item and $1.00 per additional item for shipping. With 20 items in my cart I was paying $4.00 plus 19 times $1.00 for a total of $23.00 shipping. The interesting thing was I could go to Wal-Mart and save the shipping and purchase the exact same items for less than half the site's total charges. In fact, I could purchase 40 items for less than I could 20 on the site.

Charging too much for shipping and handling will result in abandoned carts at the worst time.

Shopping Cart Checkout Process

I've reviewed web sites that had 10 steps to checkout. I've even reviewed sites that put me into a loop and got me lost. Have you ever noticed your personal behavior at, for example, Wal-Mart? You look for the shortest line and when you can't find one you get frustrated? Consider for a moment that the checkout stands were blocked from view so you had to choose a line without seeing how many people were in front of you. A shopping cart checkout process is very similar to this ... many sites don't tell you how many steps there are or which step you are on.

As a result, the more pages a shopper has to go through before they can checkout the more hurdles and exit points you have placed between a completed sale and your customer. You want your customers shopping experience to be as short and sweet as possible.

Too many steps results in higher shopping cart abandonment rates.

Decrease Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates

The international average of online conversions for e-commerce web sites is a mere two percent. What happened to the other 48% realized by traditional stores?

Traditional stores have their stores reviewed by professional evaluators to find the problems and to fix them. You may remember the old turn-stiles at the end of the checkout line in Woolworth's or other traditional stores. What you didn't see and will never see is a turn-stile at the start of the checkout process or even in the aisles. Placing barriers between the shopping cart receipt page and the customer only gives them reason to leave. Decrease those reasons and you'll notice your shopping cart abandonment rates will decrease.

Contact us today at 405-329-8500 or use our contact form to schedule a demo and learn if Merchant Metrix is right for your business.

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