Cart abandonment.
If you’re in any sort of e-commerce field, those words send chills down your spine. You’ve spent all sorts of time, money, and effort to provide great products. You’ve invested in a website to help your customers purchase those products. You drive traffic to that site, people find what they’re looking for, they add it to their cart, and…
That’s it. They go away. No items purchased. No services signed up for. Just a list of items that the customer obviously wants, but for some reason wasn’t quite ready to buy.
Why does a customer bother to add a product to their shopping cart but navigate away before buying? And how can those instances of cart abandonment be avoided in the first place?
Cause Of Cart Abandonment #1: Sticker Shock
The first reason people abandon their carts? Price.
Sometimes, a customer can make it all the way through your sales process and buy into it every step of the way… right up until that last moment when they’re facing the ‘buy now’ button. And then they pause.
Maybe they didn’t realize the total cost of the item, the service, the shipping, until they see that number staring them in the face. The buyer’s remorse they already feel makes them navigate away from your site before they can make a decision.
Or maybe, with their cursor over the button, it occurs to them that they haven’t really shopped around. They don’t know if you’re offering them a good price, so they might as well go see what other sites are offering in comparison.
You may wonder how often this happens, and whether or not it’s really a big deal for your business.
According to some studies, over 75% of shoppers abandon their carts with items they haven’t purchased… and that number doesn’t look to be falling anytime soon.
If losing ¾ of your potential sales isn’t a threat to your bottom line, I don’t know what is. But price isn’t the only reason that customers abandon their carts:
Cause Of Cart Abandonment #2: Lack Of Information
Think about those people who are leaving your site to go comparison shopping. If they already knew how much other sites were charging for that product or service, would they need to go research it? Of course not. They would already have that information.
Customers don’t feel great about buying when they have unanswered questions. People buy based on perceived value, after all.
Every customer who considers buying your product or service has to weigh how much value that will bring to their lives. How will your product make things better for them, or for their family or their business?
Potential customers need their questions answered if you expect them to be ready to part with their hard-earned money. Which brings us to the big question:
How Can Cart Abandonment Be Avoided?
The best ways to avoid cart abandonment are to thoroughly understand those two causes, anticipate them, and make sure that you address the issues before your customer has a chance to leave their cart items behind.
Price-Based Cart Abandonment
Avoiding price-based cart abandonment is all about providing incentive. What incentive does the customer have, right now, to buy your product rather that navigate away?
An effective way to provide incentive is to raise the stakes. Provide a sense of urgency for the product that makes the client realize the massive value there, and what they’d be missing if they passed that up. Incorporate elements of value-based selling throughout your sales funnel to make sure that, by the time they get to the cart, they know they have an urgent and important opportunity in their hands.
Another way to incentivize: offers and coupons. If customers have reached the stage of the purchase process where they are staring at a number and feeling overwhelmed by it, a coupon or an offer that suddenly lowers the amount might be enough to move them to buy right then.
DontGo is an excellent way to provide incentives and offers interactively to customers at that crucial moment when they’re most likely to buy! Learn more about DontGo’s exit intent technology.
Information-Based Cart Abandonment
If the issue isn’t price, it’s likely information. Which is why it’s so important to understand the questions your buyers face and incorporate them into your website, your positioning, and your sales funnels.
Content hierarchy is big here.
The way your website’s content fits together and provides information to your website’s visitors is called ‘content hierarchy.’ A good content hierarchy has relevant content that is organized in such a way that potential buyers have all the information they need to purchase, without having to hunt and gather for it on your website’s smaller, harder to find pages.
But the problem with this is that every visitor is unique, and it’s almost impossible to anticipate every single question a potential customer might have.
Having tools like search functions or live chat can help customers take the education in their own hands, so that they come to the shopping cart fully informed and ready to buy.
DontGo’s AI Chat is an excellent way to provide customer information, right at the point of sale. Learn more about our exclusive AI Chat technology.
Invest In The Right Cart Abandonment Tool
There are plenty of exit-intent popups out there that can send a banner ad to encourage customers to stay in their cart. Or live chat boxes that sit idly by and let customers navigate away without so much as a second thought.
But visitors are so used to those tools that they get blocked out. Glanced over. Simply more white noise, another popup box to exit out of.
That’s why DontGo is different.
DontGo engages with customers at the most crucial moment in your sales process, providing real interactive services when your potential customers need them most. It’s engaging, personal to your customers, and specifically tailored to answer questions relevant to your industry and business.
If you’re interested in seeing what DontGo can do to increase your conversions and lower your cart abandonment rate, sign up for a demo today.
U.S.Patents 8949377, 8738739 and 7962578