[Editor’s Note: This is a sponsored post from our partner, Jilt. Thanks to them 🙂 ]
Ask a hundred eCommerce shop owners what is the biggest blocker to boosting revenue, and most of them will probably say, “abandoned shopping carts.” And it’s no wonder they will: the average abandonment rate hovers around 70 percent. Yes, that means seven out of every 10 shopping carts are abandoned before completing checkout.
Let’s think about that for a second. If you have a store making $10,000 per month in revenue, that means just over $23,000 worth of shopping carts are being abandoned, each and every month. Just convincing 10 percent of those shoppers to complete their purchase would represent a significant revenue increase!
So why do people abandon their shopping carts?
Why shoppers bail before checking out
There are a number of reasons why people fail to check out and abandon their shopping carts. Some of them aren’t easy for you to address. You can’t really stop someone from being distracted by a cat video, or convince a buyer who was “just doing research,” after all. But many of the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment can be proactively solved. Here are a few of the main justifications for abandonment that shoppers cite and what to do about them.
Problem: Surprise costs
By far, the number one cause of shopping cart abandonment is surprising fees and costs that appear late in checkout. A shopper that’s ready to buy a $50 item might balk at a sudden $8 shipping charge and $3 in tax.
Solution: Be up front about your shipping costs and other fees as early in the buying process as possible, and if your margins will allow it, offer free or discounted shipping.
Problem: Forced account creation prior to checkout
User accounts are a smart feature to include in your eCommerce store, and WooCommerce makes account creation and management easy. But forcing users to register before they finish checkout is a needless annoyance that causes many people to walk away from their cart completely (22% of all carts are abandoned for this reason, according to a VWO survey!).
Solution: Move your account creation to after the checkout process is complete. Clearly explain for users the benefits of account creation (faster checkout next time, easy access to past orders, etc.) and if you can, provide an incentive, like a coupon code for their next order. This might also encourage repeat shopping. You can add one-click post-checkout account creation by using Jilt for WooCommerce.
Problem: No express shipping
Thanks in large part to top-tier online retailers like Amazon, many shoppers expect fast shipping. According to Statista, not offering expedited shipping is one of the most frequently cited reasons for shopping cart abandonment.
Solution: The good news is that folks who want fast shipping are often willing to pay for it. While free shipping is by far the most important incentive for buyers, fast shipping comes in second. So the obvious solution here is to offer expedited shipping as an option, but you can charge extra for it (especially if you’re able to offer a slower free shipping option, as well).
Problem: Lack of trust in merchant
As the old saying goes, trust arrives by foot and leaves by horse. It’s hard to get your customers to trust you, but it’s easy to lose their trust. And lack of trust, especially around payment security, is a big reason people abandon shopping carts.
Solution: Is your site is coming across as trustworthy as it possibly can? It should be. Use an up-to-date SSL certificate from a reputable source, display any relevant security badges or certifications, use a trusted payment processor, and make sure your site is free of typos or bugs.
Problem: Poor user experience
Long or confusing checkout processes or slow loading pages are a big problem for shoppers, and many will just abandon their cart rather than try to wade through the process.
Solution: Simplify your checkout process as much as possible (not requiring account creation is a good step!), and optimize your site so it loads quickly. Also make sure your product catalog and shopping cart are mobile friendly. Mobile eCommerce is big and growing, so it’s important that your store works on the latest smartphones. Bonus tip: embed live chat on your checkout pages so you can instantly address any concerns shoppers have.
Recovering abandoned carts with email
Even if you manage to perfect your shopping cart experience and offer everything your users could possibly want, you’ll still run into a large number of abandoned shopping carts. That’s just the name of the game. But that doesn’t mean all of those shopping carts are gone forever. Far from it—around 15 percent of abandoned carts can be recovered on average using automated cart recovery emails.
The easiest way to send abandoned shopping cart recovery emails for your WooCommerce store is with Jilt. Jilt is an automated email marketing platform built specifically for eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Easy Digital Downloads, and Shopify.
You can get setup in under fifteen minutes—including a two-click WooCommerce integration—and automatically send emails to shoppers who have abandoned carts to remind them to complete checkout or offer incentives like coupon codes or shipping discounts.
On average, merchants save 15 percent of their WooCommerce abandoned carts by signing up for Jilt and enabling an abandoned cart campaign. And, even better, Jilt also sends other lifecycle emails, like post purchase follow ups and product recommendations.