How do you reduce the number of abandoned online shopping carts?

Did you know that more 68% of the online shopping carts are abandoned? Well, It says so on the Baymard Institute’s website. As you may have guessed, an abandoned cart is an unfinished shopping process. It’s the act of adding products into your shopping cart and then leaving the website without buying.

As an online shop owner you might be interested in what you can do to reduce these abandoned shopping carts on your website. An article from Smashing Magazine lists a few tips on how to make the buying experience more attractive and how to gain your shoppers trust. Here is what they say:

Use images on the cart page

Users browse a lot before deciding. They may add products into their shopping cart and then forget what they were and why they chose them. If they can’t see the items then the likelihood of abandonment increases because they lose interest.

Make it easy to edit the cart page

If they want to remove something or to add something, let them do it and let them see they can do it. Don’t hide edit buttons just to force them to buy what they have picked. They’ll leave.

Show security logos and compliance information

It will help them finish the transaction if they trust the website and believe they can make payments safely.

Offer many payment methods

Some people like to buy via PayPal, others prefer their credit card. Some have Visa, some MasterCard, some American Express. Everybody should be able to buy things from your website and you should offer them the means to do it.

Show your phone number and physical address

Many people don’t trust websites they cannot contact or that appear like they don’t exist physically. In order to gain their trust, display at least a phone number they can call if they need to.

Display the support line on the cart page

Do you have a support phone number? An online chat for those who have questions? It’s bad if you don’t, but if you do, feature them on the cart page too. It will improve your credibility.

Don’t ask them to register before paying

Just don’t. The purchase should be as easy as buying from a store. No one asks you to register there, why should you do it on an online shop.

Offer free shipping

Oh, don’t all of us love when we get something for free? Yes, we do. Free shipping is very likely to increase your sales.

Be transparent about shipping costs and time

If you don’t or can’t offer free shipping, you should be very clear about the costs. An idea is to feature the shipping costs on the product page, so that users don’t get to the cart page and abandon the cart because they don’t expect added costs.

Make it easy on the mobile devices

In 2013, the sales from mobile devices increased by 63%, and we’re pretty sure that in 2014 they continued increasing. The first thing you need to do in order to sell more is to make your website responsive, which means to make it look pretty on the mobile devices. Find out more about responsive design here.

These are just a few steps you would want to improve, but mind you this doesn’t mean that all shopping carts will go through to the Thank You page. But what we can assure you is that they will decrease the number of abandoned ones.