Hey there! Justin Christianson here, co-founder and president of Conversion Fanatics.
Every month, we review dozens of ecommerce stores for conversion effectiveness. And one of the most common elements we look at is abandoned carts. Often, we see six and sometimes even eight out of ten people leave before making a purchase.
So, today, I want to discuss a few techniques you can use to reduce your abandoned cart rate.
Now, I know if you use Shopify or another platform like it, there are certain plugins you can use. And with these plugins, if someone starts filling out a form, you can make it so they automatically receive a series of emails with a discount coupon code or something else along those lines.
But I want to touch on a few different ways that we help ecommerce stores reduce their abandon cart rates.
The first technique is exit. A lot of people leverage exit intent offers. There’s a running joke in my circle that you shouldn’t buy anything at face value. Just try to leave the page and you’ll likely get a special discount code.
Well, I want to take this in a different direction. So instead of offering 10% or 15% off, what I recommend is offering something more.
Say, for example, you sell cosmetics. Instead of jumping straight to the discount, offer a deluxe sample size or a bonus t-shirt. First offer shoppers something of value as a premium or as a bonus if they make the purchase today. Doing so helps increase your average order value, or it, at least, helps keep your average order value consistent. It also reduces your abandoned cart rate, and you’ll create better customers.
We had a particular store as a client that had subscriptions. We decided to run a discount and then, we added the premium.
The client’s retention rate increased from about three and a half months on the subscription to about five and a half month. So there’s added value there from an average order value, a lifetime value, or a customer value standpoint.
So don’t always jump for the discount. You can, by all means, use discounts. Just try offering customers something that’s low-cost for you to fulfill but that’s also something of value to them. I’m sure you can think of a dozen ways to offer some kind of free bonus to your customers.
Next, we’re going to talk about forms. So, living in a mobile world, I see a lot of stores that do not pay attention to their forms. They do not have Google autofill in place. They’re not using HTML5. And they’re not ready for the mobile environment. And so, you constantly have to re-enter your information, especially on mobile.
Make sure your form fields are large, again, especially on mobile. And make sure your forms are easy to fill out. You should have autofill in place and you should limit the number of necessary form fields. The more steps your forms have, the worse your conversion rates are going to be and the higher your bounce rate is going to be.
We removed a single field from a company not too long ago. And the change increased the company’s form submissions by over 75%.
The next technique is to continue selling. I see a lot of people who do a good job of selling, positioning, adding value and propositions, and building trust and proof, but then, when customers get to their shopping carts to checkout, nothing! This often occurs when using Shopify, which has limited real estate and elements you can change.
But what you need to do is continually sell. Highlight your social proof. Highlight your guarantee, your fast shipping, your free shipping. Leverage progress bars. Leverage benefit-driven bullet points if you can. And let customers know you’re there for them. They just have to put in their contact information. Continue the selling process all the way through to the shopping cart and don’t give up once customers move onto the actual cart page.
The fourth and probably most important technique I’m going to talk about is the number of steps you include in the checkout process.
All too often, we see customers get to their carts, click, and boom! They’re hit with messages like, “Create an account,” “Check out as a guest,” “Login with LinkedIn,” “Login with Facebook,” or “Log in with Google.”
Customers are given all these different options, which only add friction to the checkout process. The more steps you have in this process, and especially from the checkout on, the more friction you are going to add, and it’s going to reduce your conversion rates.
So pay attention to the number of steps in your process. Generally speaking, you should have no more than three. And if you can limit it to a one-page checkout, by all means, test that, because it could make a big difference to your business.
So here’s a quick recap:
- exit intent and using bonus items instead of coupon codes
- testing your form fields, making sure they’re large, mobile-ready, and the number of form fields is limited to what is absolutely necessary
- continue selling via trust elements, like your guarantee, social proof, and having your contact information on the actual checkout page
- and reducing the number of steps in the checkout process.
These are just a few ideas for you to test.
If you enjoy these ideas, be sure to like, share, and comment on our post. Let us know what you think. And, by all means, if you need some help or would like to hear specific ideas about what you should test or better ideas based on your data, request your free analysis on ConversionFanatics.com.
We’ll talk to you again soon.