RSSJune 29th, 2006
5 Steps to Lowering Shopping Cart Abandonment
Everyone is looking for ways to increase website traffic these days, and for a good reason. But what are you doing to make the most of the traffic that’s already there?
Optimizing your checkout process is definitely one of the most efficient ways to make more money from your existing site traffic. Let’s take a look at 5 of the most important changes you could make to give your customers more certainty making a purchase
1. Are We There Yet?
Optimizing your checkout process is all about reassuring the customer, in a sense you need to hold their hand until the purchase is made. One simple way to reassure your customers that they are almost there is a progress bar. Find out how many steps there are in your checkout process and make sure to let your customers know. They are much more likely to make the purchase if they know how many steps are involved in the process. Spelling it out is also effective, like “Step 2 of 5- Checkout”.
2. Respect Your Guests’ Anonymity
With new visitors on your site, the object is to keep things as simple as possible. One way to do this is to NOT require them to create an account. A powerful feature of some carts is that you can give the customer an option to proceed as a “guest”. This means they can fill out the bare minimum of information and make their purchase quickly. The guest technique works especially in stores that don’t have many repeat customers. One of our clients, AndyAndrews.com has a sign-in page that looks like this . . .
3. Be Available by Phone
Not only should you have your contact information and store policies visible to the user at all times, but a phone number is still most important. Many of us in the web development world just assume that everyone has come around to making purchases online, and there is no need for other ways of ordering. If you think that, then you should get out more. Tons of people still feel insecure punching their personal information in a machine regardless of how secure your site is.
We suggest having a phone number that people can call and speak with a real person. If you are a smaller merchant and are unable to have staff available to help customers, simply setup a voicemail line. Do whatever it takes to assure the customer they can order through other means if they wish. Ordering by fax and mail is also worth making available. It also gives your customers a sense of security in knowing they can make a phone call if they have an issue.
4. Make Changes Easy
Most of us are quite methodical and indecisive in our checkout process, myself included. In light of this, give the user every opportunity to edit their shopping cart, and to edit their information before confirming their order. If a customer has to go back five steps in order to add something to their cart or change the shipping address, they are likely to just leave. So one thing you can do is to make sure the product name in the cart ALWAYS links back to the product. Do the same for the shipping address, give them the opportunity to change it up until the order is confirmed.
5. Study Your Customers
Once you have taken the time to optimize your shopping cart to the best of your knowledge and ability, make sure to keep an eye on stats. Free programs like Google Analytics are an incredible resource that will tell you exactly where you are losing customers in the checkout process. If you seem to be losing most customers on the shipping page, then that is where you try to make some changes and simplify your process.
I would recommend coming back to check your analytics once a month and finding ways you can constantly make your checkout easier for the customer.
In case you were wondering, an abandonment rate of 20-30% is superb. Depending on the cost of your store products and other factors, it could vary, but that is certainly a great target. Thanks to Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg and their MUST-READ book on this subject, Call to Action. I highly recommend it for further study, and you can always contact us if interested in shopping cart optimization services.
Posted in Web Development, Business -
One Comment
Tripp, George — January 2nd, 2008
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