Article: “The Sad Tale of Abandoned Shopping Carts”
Source: eMarketer

Leaving products behind in a shopping cart is as easy as a click.

Before going into the top three abandonment reasons, let’s first ask ourselves if adding products in shopping carts is perse a buying sign?

There’s a big difference being already caught up in the buying modus or in the stages before that, information or just the thrill to see how much it will cost, or as a kind of “Wishlist” like Amazon has, but many other shops don’t?
Trying to point out to the fact that it might be well possible that all kinds of reasons which are related to the customer which cannot be given a positive turn, to paraphrase eMarketer:  “Sweetening the deal with free shipping, coupons and special discounts is a great way to encourage online shoppers to complete their purchases.”

The top three reasons are:
*High shipping charges – 46%
My advice / experience: be always clear upfront how much the shipping costs will be. You can implement modules which update the shipping costs after each product added to the shopping cart. This might scare off the buyer in an earlier stage, but the dissapointment will be less than having shopped for a while and then coming to the conclusion that it’s too much.

* Wanted to comparison shop – 37%
My advice / experience: researches point out that 85% of the people are in an informative state of mind when shopping, offer the customers all the tools to get their information. If customers do add products to the shopping cart, this still might be in the pre-buying modus.
Keep this figure in mind, it will put figures in perspective and make sure you help potential customers through their information modus to the buying modus.

* Lack of money – 36%
My advice / experience:  it could be the high shipping costs, additional costs, the total costs which is too high. Make sure your updated total of their current amount of products is well visible. Give customers no reasons and no bad feelings when they come to the conclusion they lack money. Customers do like to blame anyone but themselves.

I personally am not sure if the paraphrased solutions which are offered by eMarketer will help your customers and your company in achieving their goals. Free shipping is a service that is offered more and more, but not because as an effect of high shipping costs.
Special discounts are a good way, but not every brand and not every pricing strategy will benefit from this.

Make sure you are clear, honest, open and straightforward.
What is your take on shopping cart abandonment?

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