By Aaron Agius
If you’re an e-commerce store owner, there’s a good chance that cart abandonment is one of your core frustrations. In fact, the average abandoned cart rate is 69.23%, according to Baymard Institute. This represents a significant loss of revenue.
But if you’re able to revive a number of your abandoned carts, you can vastly improve the profitability of your business. Take advantage of the following tactics and you can dramatically lower your abandoned cart rate:
1. Use staggered discounts
In order to encourage a purchase, many marketers like to include discounts in their abandoned cart emails. I think this is a good idea, but I recommend taking it a step further.
The longer it’s been since someone added a product to their cart without purchasing, the less likely it is that they will ever convert. Your ideal window for reviving a lost cart is in the first 48 hours after the event. Instead of offering the same discount to every customer who leaves their cart, offer a more significant discount to those who’ve been inactive longer. For example, you might offer a 10% discount the day after the abandonment, whereas a 20% discount could be given to customers who’ve been inactive for two weeks as an added incentive.
Sure, a larger discount means less profit—but no sale means zero profit. Once you’ve gotten the initial sale, you can continue marketing to these customers in the future for repeat business.
2. Install a currency converter
If you’re selling to an international audience (as most stores do), it’s advisable to show prices in each customer’s native currency. You don’t want your customers leaving your site to consult Google to perform currency conversions to find out how much they’re going to have to pay. This can really skyrocket your cart abandonment.
If you use the Shopify platform, I recommend installing the BEST Currency Converter from the app store. This app automatically detects the location of your customers and will display their country’s currency as soon as they arrive on your home page.
3. Offer free shipping
If presented with unexpected shipping costs at the checkout, 28% of shoppers will abandon their carts. To bring this number down, consider upping your prices and include free shipping—and if you serve an international audience, offer free worldwide shopping. This means that the profitability of your orders will change slightly depending on which region you ship to, but it also makes for a much smoother experience for your customers.
Don’t just take my word for it, conduct a split test and see if free shipping works for you. If you have a landing page for a $10 product that costs $5 to ship, consider sending traffic to a variant page that sells the product for $15 including shipping. You might be surprised by the results. In either case, you receive the same payment.
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4. Allow for a smooth checkout process
Make sure that your checkout process is as fast and simple as humanly possible. Don’t force customers to sign up for an account at your store just to make a purchase—this makes things more complicated than they need to be. The less information a customer has to type in to get to the checkout page, the better.
For this reason, I recommend allowing users to checkout using PayPal. It’s easy to set up a PayPal business account, and customers feel secure using this payment method.
5. Feature trust badges
Unfortunately, stories of internet security breaches are prolific nowadays. Customers need to know that their credit card and contact details are safe when they purchase from you. This is especially true for customers who are visiting your store for the first time and have no previous experience with your brand.
A customer may not have heard of you, but they’ve probably heard of Norton Security. Including trust badges from companies like Norton and McAfee alleviates the fear of data fraud and makes customers feel safe in completing their purchases.
6. Display customer reviews
Social proof plays an enormous role in purchasing decisions. Considering that 70% of consumers say they look at product reviews before making a purchase, it’s wise to have plenty of reviews on your product page.
In my opinion, nothing beats video reviews. Text reviews are good, but they’re easy to fake and are therefore not as credible. I recommend sending an email to your repeat customers (if they’ve bought from you multiple times, they obviously like your products). Ask them for a video review in exchange for a discount code. Smartphone video quality is perfectly acceptable. In fact, lower quality footage can be viewed as more credible compared to polished studio-shot testimonials.
7. Consider retargeting
Sometimes, customers may ignore a marketing email but will stop and pay attention when your message appears in their Facebook news feed. With Facebook Pixel you can target a custom audience of users who have added products to their shopping cart, but who haven’t visited the URL of your checkout page (indicating they haven’t completed the purchase).
One of the reasons that Facebook retargeting works so well for cart abandonment campaigns is because of the visual impact you can make. The first thing that people will see is the ad image, so make sure that it’s powerful and emotive. I like to use images of products being used in real-life scenarios because this looks much more natural in the context of a Facebook news feed, but test what works best for you. Also consider offering a discount in your ad copy, and be sure to leverage the power of scarcity. Make it clear that the offer is limited and will end by a certain date (mention the deadline).
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About the Author
Post by: Aaron Agius
Aaron Agius is the CEO of worldwide digital agency Louder Online, and is according to Forbes among the world’s leading digital marketers. Working with clients such as Salesforce, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel, and scores of stellar brands, Aaron is a Growth Marketer—a fusion between search, content, social, and PR.
Company: Company Name Here
Website: www.louder.online
Connect with me on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
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