Make sure your website is working for you not against you when it comes to abandoned shopping carts
The next seasonal event is always just around the corner. Whether it’s Easter, Christmas, Halloween or Valentine’s Day – seasonal selling is a critical time for many online businesses and you can never be too ready. Take Christmas for example, according to a report by the Centre for Retail Research, ‘18% of Britons had completed their festive shopping by the end of October’. A further 32% of shoppers are expected to have their Christmas shopping wrapped up by the end of November. This is higher than any other country in Europe. Whatever the next special occasion is, you want to make sure you’ve done everything you can to capitalise on the boost in traffic.
How? By making sure your checkout process is easy, simple and doesn’t deter shoppers from completing their purchase. Some studies show shocking cart abandonment rates as high as 80% – imagine if you’ve done the hard work to drive customers to your website and won them over with your weird or wonderful wares only for 4 out of every 5 to bail at the last minute.
A survey by customer journey experts Namagoo looked into the most frustrating parts of the checkout for desktop, mobile and tablet shoppers.
As you can see, having to fill in the same details twice topped the list. Answer: only ask for information once! And make sure you only ask for the information you need. It’s all very well using checkout forms to gather customer data, but if you put them off by asking too many questions then you’ve lost the sale for the sake of knowing that little extra info.
The survey also revealed why customers abandon purchases during the checkout process. The biggest bugbear was shipping and fees. Make sure you’re upfront about these from the beginning, or even incorporate the fees into the price of the item then offer free shipping.
Website errors can often be easily fixed. Get some friends and family to test out your purchasing process or get your web guys and girls to look into the most common errors.
60% of shoppers said they abandoned their cart because they had to create an account, so make sure you offer a ‘Guest checkout’ option – it’s faster, easier and you can still capture customer data.
There are loads of techie ways to improve user experience when it comes to your checkout process, but there are also some quick fixes that could make all the difference to your business’s bottom line.
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