Here is the thing about your checkout process: if it is not fast, easy, has too many steps, too many fields to fill in, or other issues, your customer will quickly abandon their cart and move on to your competition or somewhere else that makes it easy for them to buy.
This can be a problem for your ecommerce store called cart abandonment. What this really means is that the customer got all the way through the sales funnel, but your checkout process failed to hold their attention. This can mean a number of things.
- Your process has too many pages.
- Your process has too many fields to fill in.
- You don’t accept the customer’s preferred payment method.
- The customer does not feel like your process is secure and trustworthy.
- Your checkout cart looks and feels unprofessional.
There are several simple ways to combat this cart abandonment issue, and even some advanced cart abandonment fighting methods. Here are seven of them that will get you on the path to customer loyalty.
1. Exit Intent Pop-ups
One way to prevent cart abandonment is to have exit intent pop-ups in place. When a user moves their cursor toward one corner or ther other, like they are about to leave your page, you can use plugins to set up pop-up forms or coupons that invite them to stay, take an action, or contact you or your team with questions.
This can show the user that you are paying attention to them, and you really do want them to stay on your page and complete their purchase. There are many of these available for WooCommerce and other platforms.
2. Use Plugins to Prevent Abandonment
One of the primary advantages of WordPress and WooCommerce is that initially the platforms are free, but there are several plugins for a number of functions you can add to your site. These are seven plugins, some free and some relatively inexpensive ones that can help you with the prevention of cart abandonment.
- WooCommerce Buy Now Plug In
- WooCommerce Direct Checkout
- WooCommerce One Page Checkout
- WooCommerce Express Checkout for Virtual and Downloadable Products
- WooCommerce Quick Checkout
- WooCommerce One Page Shopping
- YITH WooCommerce One-Click Checkout
One of the biggest advantages of each of these plugins is that they make checkout faster and more painless for your customer, and they do so without a lot of work on your part. Check them out and see which ones meet your individual needs.
3. Make Shipping Costs Reasonable and Clear
One thing people hate is surprises when it comes to price. This is why shipping costs are so critical, and why memberships like Amazon Prime are so popular. Free shipping is a big enticer to customers, as they know the price they see is what they will actually pay.
However, even if you cannot offer free shipping, offering shipping costs that are clear, easy to calculate, and that fall in line with other types of shipping costs will make it easy for your customer to buy from you. Make sure that you have a simple shipping calculator based on zip code, and make these calculations obvious.
4. Enable Guest Checkout
While saving a guest’s information has a lot of advantages for you and for their shopping experience, there are those customers who are more concerned with privacy than with convenience. The simple fact of the matter is that if you don’t have a guest checkout option, some of these customers will leave, never to come back.
This is why guest checkout is a must as a part of any ecommerce website, and not having one is one of the key reasons for cart abandonment. Avoid this error at all costs.
5. Make it Possible to Save the Cart
For the same reason that guest checkout is critical, so is the ability to save a shopping cart for a returning customer. Often, a user is simply window shopping, or determining how much money they need to save to afford something. This is a key point to understand: if the user can return to make a purchase without starting the whole shopping process over again, they will be more likely to return and simply press buy.
This is one of the key conveniences, and another argument for why a “buy now” button is critical to your ecommerce success.
6. Make Security Prominent
Okay, so your site is secure. How do shoppers know this? By you displaying security badges and certificates in a prominent way. It needs to be obvious that your site is secure and what you are doing to secure it. If a user feels at all uncomfortable entering their credit card information or other personal information into your site forms, they will be likely to abandon the cart and go to a site where they feel more comfortable.
This is one of the reasons smaller ecommerce sites struggle to compete with big names like Amazon or Walmart who also have online stores. Those are trusted brands when it comes to security. Yours needs to be one too.
7. Offer Multiple Payment Methods
Another chief reason for car abandonment is that your site does not offer the user their preferred method of payment. While taking all major debit and credit cards is certainly one way to take payments, there are many more contactless payments like Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, and Google Wallet. The more of these you take, the more likely users are to buy.
Remember, most searches are started and finished on mobile devices, and customers are increasingly using them to pay for purchases both on the web and in person. Being on the edge and taking those payments is a sure way to succeed.
There are of course many other ways to fight cart abandonment. But if you start with these seven, you will be well on your way to making sure your ecommerce site will be the best it can be, and your customers will stick with you from initial site visit to purchase.
