There can be a number of reasons for cart abandonment, which is causing e-commerce stores’ sales to flow down, and your store could be one trying to defy them.
How can shopping cart abandonment be a problem?
With the average cart abandonment rate standing at 70.19%, this issue led to a loss in sales for e-commerce stores.
The shopping cart abandonment rate can increase behind your back, but cart abandonments are easily preventable when you follow some simple and efficient methods.
This article helps you unpack the top reasons for cart abandonment and how to prevent cart abandonment.
Read below to find out what they are.
Recover abandoned carts and lost sales using Retainful’s easy-to-set-up email automation.
What Is Cart Abandonment?
Cart abandonment happens when potential customers browse, add items to their shopping carts, and leave the store without purchasing them. Many customers shop and browse several products online, often resulting in high cart abandonment rates.
Shopping cart abandonment led to a whopping $417,814.92 loss in revenue for ecommerce stores in just six months in 2022.
To avoid such huge losses, you need to convert abandoned carts into sales conversions. To do this, you must know the reasons for cart abandonment and the abandoned cart recovery methods.
But before that, you need to know how to calculate the cart abandonment rates for calculating their metrics and track progress.
How To Calculate Cart Abandonment Rate?
Calculating the cart abandonment rate is essential to monitoring lost sales, benchmarking performance, and knowing why, how, and when customers abandon their purchases, causing cart abandonment.
Knowing the exact rate of abandoned carts helps you understand their magnitude, and you can take steps to reduce cart abandonment rates swiftly.
Next, let’s look at the reasons for cart abandonment that cause deductions to your sales.
Top 12 Reasons For Shopping Cart Abandonment
Each reason for shopping cart abandonment can be a barrier to gaining sales, so understanding them is crucial. Without understanding the reasons for cart abandonment, you cannot help abandoned cart recovery.
1. Additional Costs (48%- Cart Abandonment rate)
High additional or unexpected costs are the top reason for abandoned carts, and they have an increased cart abandonment rate compared to other reasons.
It could happen at the very last moment when they are just one click away (“Place order”) from purchasing.
If a customer moves to check out and sees additional charges applied to the product cost, such as shipping charges, taxes, delivery fees, handling costs, etc., it can displease them immediately.
When added to the product cost, these costs appear more than expected and are not very pocket-friendly for customers.
2. Compulsory Account Creation (25%)
This is one of the reasons for abandoned carts, which is a turn-off for customers’ online shopping experience, as some ecommerce stores insist on mandatory account creation.
It’s like restricting customers from their very first shopping experience in your store.
You might do this to collect emails or other communication details from customers, but this reason fuels for abandoning shopping carts.
And this method backfires you, leaving your ecommerce store with cart abandonments.
Customer details can be collected in many other methods, and mandatory account creation is not one of them. The primary thing to count on is letting the customers use the service and get a satisfactory user experience.
So, it’s one of the reasons for cart abandonment that sits on top.
3. Slower Delivery (23%)
Slow delivery is one of the reasons for cart abandonment, which makes customers instantly visit another store to resume their shopping.
This creates hesitation in the customer’s place. The longer it takes to deliver the product to customers, the more likely you are to lose conversions.
Slow product delivery leads to customer loss and provides opportunities for them to purchase elsewhere that offer faster delivery.
Another thing to consider is providing accurate delivery time once the customer reaches the checkout page.
When customers are unsure about the estimated delivery time, it triggers second thoughts and encourages shopping cart abandonment.
4. Concerns About Secure Payments (19%)
Concerns about secured payments are one of the cart abandonment causes, which priorly happens when an ecommerce site appears to be “insecure” about shopping and purchasing.
If your e-commerce store has an outdated or very simple design, does not have an SSL Certificate, or has mistakes in its webpage, your customers may feel suspicious about it.
So, they feel unsafe sharing their credit/debit card information to purchase from your store because of how it appears to the customers.
5. Longrun Checkouts (17%)
A complex and lengthy checkout process results in purchase abandonment because it consumes much time of the customer.
This is one of the top reasons for purchase abandonment, where customers need to put so much effort into placing an order by filling in a bunch of details.
It frustrates the customer and causes them to leave the items in their carts as they are, resulting in increased cart abandonment rates.
6. Unable To Calculate The Total Cost (16%)
The primary thing a customer checks for while purchasing something online is the cost of the product.
Abandoning the shopping carts hikes when customers can’t properly find the exact pricing or total cost involved upfront, which makes them confused and unsure about how much to spend.
This cart abandonment causes them to reach the point of “let’s check somewhere else” only because they can’t find the pricing near the product or displayed only on the checkout page.
7. Webpage Performance Issues (14%)
Shopping cart abandonment reasons, such as choppy websites with performance issues like crashes, bugs, and errors, won’t work correctly to fulfill the customers’ shopping needs.
Such things deter customers from using your site by giving them an unsatisfactory shopping experience.
An ecommerce webpage with poor functionality and maintenance makes it one of the top reasons for abandoning shopping carts.
8. Unsatisfactory Return Policies (13%)
Obviously, customers will look for all necessary details about the product, and return policies are a prime factor that customers will consider more.
Specifically, first-time visitors to your store might not be aware of your shopping services or policies, so they might consider the circumstances in which they will choose to return the product even before making a purchase.
One of the shopping cart abandonment causes is strict or complex return policies that encourage customers to leave products in their carts.
9. Payment Limitations (11%)
Payment limitations are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment in ecommerce. Not every customer uses the same type of payment method.
Payment is an essential step in the marketing funnel for both the customer and you.
Each customer prefers different payment types, so if your store provides only a few payment gateways, customers won’t decide to make a purchase in your store.
10. Excluding Social Proofs
Excluding social proofs and testimonials is one of the main reasons for abandoned carts, as it does not affirm customers to continue their shopping.
Customers will believe in an online store and its products only when it has reviews or ratings from previous customers.
As a result of this shopping cart abandonment reason, your ecommerce store lacks reliability and fails to earn the trust of your customers.
11. Lacking Discounts Or Incentives
A main reason for abandoned carts is the absence of discounts and offers.
Providing discounts is crucial. They’re like perks that quickly make customers overcome their hesitations about purchasing.
Customers who can’t find any offers or price deductions are more likely to check some other store for discounts.
This is one of the reasons for abandoning shopping carts, which results in customer loss.
12. Window-shopping
Window shopping is a reason for cart abandonment that cannot be helped, as it depends on the customer to make the next move. Confusion and unsurity of where to buy are causes for purchase abandonment.
They might just be comparing the prices in different stores or adding items to their carts for future purchases. This is the only loose end that doesn’t help abandoned cart recovery.
These are the possible reasons for cart abandonment that troubles your ecommerce business. Next, let’s unpack the best ways for cart recovery to help you lead sales.
Set up abandoned cart recovery email sequence that converts more with Retainful’s automation workflow.
Best Ways To Prevent Abandoned Carts
The right solutions for the reasons for cart abandonment are listed below. Follow these measures to ensure abandoned cart recovery.
- Displaying total costs upfront can help customers clearly see the costs involved, and they’ll purchase without hesitation.
- An easy and short checkout process makes the shopping experience more convenient for the customers to complete their purchases.
- Save the details entered so the customer does not need to re-enter all the details in case of problems or bugs.
- Keep it short by demanding only the most relevant and essential details.
- Provide one or two guest checkouts so customers can have a pleasing shopping experience. Once they are satisfied, they will create an account.
- Deliver products at the right time to give the customers a satisfying purchase and delivery experience. Try to provide faster or optimal delivery time.
- Check and maintain the website regularly to ensure it works flawlessly and provides a better user experience for customers.
- Offer ample convenient payment methods so that every customer can make a purchase using the mode of payment they prefer.
- Show social proof and testimonials, reassure first-time and repeat buyers about your products, and build trust in you.
- To prevent customers from having trouble returning the product, have easy, hassle-free return policies that are easily understandable to them.
- Don’t lose hope when a customer abandons their cart, they can still be recovered by sending abandoned cart emails. Cart abandonment emails are an excellent way to claim lost carts.
- Customers might not have that little push when they aren’t provided with incentives. Giving offers and discounts is highly helpful for you to gain sales.
These practices can be followed to reduce purchase abandonments and increase abandoned cart recovery.
Send personalized emails for cart recovery and reduce abandoned cart rates with Retainful.
Final Word
Cart abandonments can be a setback for your ecommerce store, but preventing it is possible by following those simple methods mentioned above.
You can easily prevent these shopping cart abandonment reasons from recurring. When done correctly, you can reduce cart abandonment and regain lost sales.
Now, you would have known the top reasons for cart abandonment and how to recover abandoned carts effectively.
However, in very few cases, such as window shopping can’t be prevented, but that little blind spot won’t affect your business much.
Also Read
- How to Reduce Shopify Abandoned Carts? – Strategies + Apps
- WooCommerce Abandoned Cart – An Ultimate Guide
- 11 Best WooCommerce Abandoned Cart Plugins to Recover Lost Sales
Unexpected costs sit on top of cart abandonment reasons, with a 48-50% rate.
The average cart abandonment rate is 70%, and nearly three-fourths of the sales aren’t converted.
Customers might consider factors like secure payments, shipping, return policies, etc.
It is triggered when customers add an item to their shopping carts and end up leaving without purchasing it.
1. Cart abandonment – When a customer leaves the store after adding products to their cart
2. Checkout abandonment – When a customer proceeds to the checkout page but does not complete the purchase
Improve checkout conversions by,
1. Showing social proof
2. Providing discounts
3. Provide guest checkout
4. Provide multiple payment options
5. Develop a simple checkout process
Measuring the cart abandonment rate will give you the percentage of visitors who visit but don’t complete a purchase (conversion rate).
Yes, cart abandonment emails can win back nearly 20% of abandoned carts.
You can say a set of things that leads to conversion, like
1. Reminding the customers about the products
2. Insisting to make the purchase with discounts
3. Using Fear of Missing Out, etc.
By using an email marketing tool, you can have clear data about every process of an abandoned cart. Retainful is a powerful tool for recovering abandoned carts.
