Abandonment

Abandonment is when a visitor on a web page leaves before completing the desired action. For example when a customer adds products to the shopping cart but leaves before making the final purchase. This is known as Shopping cart abandonment. Abandonment is a strong business metric that relates to customer conversion rates and revenue and a high abandonment rate shows that your checkout process needs improvement.

Formula to calculate the shopping cart abandonment rate

1-(Total number of completed purchases / number of carts created)X100

For example, if you have 400 carts created, and 100 completed purchases, then your cart abandonment rate is 75%.

Reasons for shopping cart abandonment

• Complicated Checkout process: A confusing and long checkout process with multiple forms and many steps may deter the shoppers from making the final purchase.
• Additional charges: Unexpected shipping costs during the checkout process may slow down the shoppers.
• Mandatory account creation: Asking the shoppers to create an account before they complete the purchase acts as a barrier as most people like to shop using the guest accounts.
• Payment security concerns: Online payments make everyone very cautious. Therefore, shoppers will not end up making a purchase if they don’t trust you with their personal information.
• Unclear return and refund policy: Insufficient refund of return policies makes the shoppers look for options somewhere else.
• Lack of desirable payment options: Payment options play an important role during the checkout process as shoppers are looking for all options including Paytm, Google Pay, and cash on delivery.
  

Ways to combat shopping cart abandonment

• All costs upfront: Be transparent about all costs including shipping charges and taxes to avoid any unexpected price increase during the checkout.
• Including thumbnails of products: Item thumbnails throughout the checkout process keep the product on the shopper’s mind during the entire process.
• Effortless navigation: Make the navigation process between your store and cart effortless, so that shoppers can easily add products to their cart and return to the main page to browse the rest of the products.
• Provide Guest checkout options: Not all shoppers are interested in creating an account before they make a purchase. Therefore it is important to include the guest account option to make the process easier for the.
• Optimize page load speeds: Slow speed, slows down the shoppers as they lose interest. Therefore, the page should load faster to ensure a better user experience.
• Offer Live Chat Support: With an active chat option with the support team, shoppers can clear their doubts anywhere during the checkout process which reduces the cart abandonment rate.