13 Jan ABANDONED CHECKOUT RECOVERY TACTICS FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE

Ecommerce is evolving at an accelerated pace: globally, its revenues are projected to grow to €4.7 trillion in 2022 [1], up from €4.3 trillion in 2021. That’s a rise of over €440 billion in just one year.

Therefore, in 2022, ecommerce will continue to become an increasingly popular choice for consumers worldwide, with over 2.14 billion people expected to buy goods and services online.

Undeniably, electronic commerce is a powerful opportunity for businesses to increase sales and reach new customers. Yet, there is a complex problem to tackle as more and more consumers enjoy online browsing: we are talking about shopping cart abandonment, one of the biggest struggles eCommerce businesses faced last year. Globally, in March 2021, almost 80 percent of online shopping orders were abandoned, i.e. not converted into a purchase. [2]

Although 34% of users are indeed only browsing [3] and even if they have added items to their cart, they are simply not ready to buy, there are many other reasons as to why there is still a large proportion of users who leave their virtual shopping cart before paying.

The cart abandonment rate is an important metric for ecommerce sites to keep track of not only because it directly impacts sales, customer loyalty, and engagement, but also because it could indicate poor user experience and help identify key aspects to be optimised in the buyer’s journey.

Let’s have a look at three ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment on your ecommerce.

Knowing your abandonment rate and testing your customer journey

As an eCommerce merchant, starting to actively track and analyze shopping cart abandonment KPIs will help you understand the shopping behavior of your website visitors and customers.

Shopping cart abandonment rate is calculated by dividing the total number of completed transactions by the total number of transactions that were initiated. This rate will identify what percentage of a site’s users signal purchase intent by adding an item to the cart, but don’t complete the purchase. [4]

Checkout Abandonment vs Cart Abandonment 

You may also want to differentiate between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment.

Cart abandonment is when a shopper adds one or more items to their cart while visiting your website and then for whatever reason decides to leave without taking any further action.

Checkout abandonment is when a shopper goes through their journey by adding one or more items to their cart, entering their personal information and perhaps even their payment details in the checkout step, and then deciding not to complete their purchase.

Abandoning the merchant’s site at checkout may signal issues at specific stages of the buying process.

This information can be crucial to identify areas for improvement and can serve as an opportunity for merchants to recover abandoned carts and convert more online visitors to customers.

Test, test and test again

When was the last time you walked through your checkout flow? Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and testing the entire buying process on your website is something not to be underestimated.

What is missing? What is not working as it should? If you make this exercise a routine, you will soon find out where customers are getting confused or stucked and can then dive into solutions.

You may be surprised to know that 94% of top European ecommerce businesses have at least five basic errors in their checkout, thus adding unnecessary friction for customers. [5]

Did you know for example that 15 percent of consumers in Europe leave their online shopping cart when their desired payment method isn’t available? Or that 21 percent of European consumers abandon a purchase if the checkout takes longer than one minute? [6]

Streamlining your checkout page

Your ecommerce checkout process is a key step in driving conversions. To stay relevant, make sure your checkout page provides:

Minimised steps

Removing any distractions and unnecessary actions is crucial at this stage. You need to keep it simple and clear. Don’t require shoppers to register before checkout, as registration can be a big source of friction for your customer. Make sure you offer a guest checkout procedure to keep the experience as smooth as possible. You can make account creation optional and only available once customers have completed their order. You should also remove any unnecessary fields from your checkout form and use autofill when applicable.

Multiple Payment Options

One of the reasons why potential customers leave right before the conversion is the absence of their preferred payment solution. With a rising number of available methods, it is vital to diversify payment options. Not surprisingly, merchants identify diversifying payment methods away from cards (35%) and satisfying local payment preferences with local payment methods (37%) as two of their top most significant payments challenges in the coming years. [7]

As the way customers (want to) pay is changing, Account-to-Account payments (A2A) have become the world’s fastest growing method, which is now a must for your ecommerce check-out. A2A payments work by moving funds quickly and securely between merchant and consumer bank accounts with no unnecessary intermediaries. This creates a low-cost, highly efficient means of transferring value – perfect for the new economy, both for merchants and consumers. [8]

A2A payment solutions, such as  iDEAL in the Netherlands, eps-Überweisung in Austria, giropay in Germany and MyBank in Italy, are the perfect fit for today’s time-pressed consumer looking for fast, safe and secure payments and better management of their bank accounts. Consumer interest in A2A payments is huge: they are predicted to account for 15% of all transactions globally by 2030. [9]  A must for your checkout.

Transparency

Avoid unpleasant surprises during checkout. Always be transparent upfront about payment, shipping and delivery information.

Don’t make visitors wander around or click links to find out which payment methods you accept or what shipping costs they can expect. If they find themselves looking for such details at checkout, chances are they will just leave and most probably never return.

With regards to payments, a good idea is to clearly display the relevant logos on each button in order to make available options easily recognisable. Ideally, a pop-up window providing a concise description of each method should be included. An example? If you offer MyBank payments, you may complement the dedicated button with “Select your bank and pay directly from your online banking with real-time confirmation”.

Furthermore, make sure your contact information is displayed prominently: make it easy for your customer to get in touch with you. Transparency helps keep your checkout process intuitive and trustworthy.

Website speed and mobile responsiveness

As previously mentioned, 21 percent of European consumers abandon a purchase if the checkout takes longer than one minute. This shows the importance of website speed in online retail, with fast checkout being particularly crucial.

To avoid abandonment due to slow loading, make website speed check-up a routine. Today, many valuable free or unexpensive tools are available to test the performance of your e-shop. You can easily identify possible weaknesses and reduce page load time, which is key for the overall success of your online business. Remember, every second counts when it comes to ecommerce.

At the same time, if your payment page isn’t mobile-responsive, you will miss out on an important part of your e-sales. A mobile responsive website instantly adapts to any screen on any device while maintaining flawless readability and great performance.

It’s important to note that being mobile-friendly and mobile responsive is not the same thing. Today, being mobile-friendly is not enough to ensure an optimal user experience.

It is also important to keep responsiveness in mind when it comes to payment options: integrating a solution like MyBank, which can be used from any device (pc, smartphone or tablet) will help with abandonment reduction.

Addressing cart abandonment with recovery campaigns

A cart recovery campaign allows e-stores to remind customers that they still have items in their shopping cart. There are a number of retargeting strategies and technologies businesses can leverage to encourage visitors to return. One of the most popular tactics is retargeting through personalised display advertising.

However, personalized abandonment email and SMS campaigns are now becoming the core of digital acquisition and customer retention. These appear to be extremely effective in re-engaging customers and influencing them to return to complete their purchase. As timing is crucial, the immediacy of SMS is key here. Messages are opened on average within 90 seconds, compared to 90 minutes for email. SMS has an open rate of 98% with 90% of messages opened within three minutes, with a clickthrough rate of about 36% (according to SalesCycle), and 28.7% conversion (about a third of clicks on SMS links result in recovered sales). [10]

Conclusions

Checkout cart abandonment is a key aspect of the online shopping process which retailers need to pay careful attention to. Although abandonments are lower in more mature regions like Europe [11], 94% of the top European ecommerce businesses appear to have at least five basic errors in their checkout, adding unnecessary friction for customers. [12]

Overall, the checkout flow, a crucial step to making a sale, is often overlooked. Fortunately, various tactics and tools are available today to optimise the final online buying stage and therefore reduce cart abandonments to a minimum, while inducing greater returns.

It’s a good idea to pay special attention to payment options offered to customers on your ecommerce as these can play a major role in decreasing the purchase journey abandonment rate, building trust and boosting conversions.

The adoption of a payment solution such as MyBank significantly improves your ecommerce checkout experience with a trusted, easier, alternative method. You can say goodbye to friction by letting your customers simply signing in to their online banking from your website for a seamless transaction that does not require any card, new registration or app download. Discover how it works here.

 

 

 

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/379046/worldwide-retail-e-commerce-sales/

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/457078/category-cart-abandonment-rate-worldwide/

[3] https://www1.salecycle.com/l/22702/2021-04-01/77jbfv

[4] https://www.optimizely.com/optimization-glossary/shopping-cart-abandonment/

[5] https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts_2021.pdf

[6] https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts_2021.pdf

[7] Trustly – Take control of your ecommerce payment costs (Merchant Report #4 2021), https://www.trustly.net

[8] https://www.paymentscardsandmobile.com/research/do-you-know-the-worlds-fastest-growing-payment-method/

[9] https://innovationjury.com/app/uploads/2021/04/Innovation_Jury_Report_2021.pdf

[10] https://matttanguay.com/best-practices/144-cart-abandonment-emails-or-sms/

[11] https://www1.salecycle.com/l/22702/2021-04-01/77jbfv

[12] https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts_2021.pdf