Attract customers to your e-commerce is always important, but ensuring that they finalise their online purchase process without abandoning the shopping cart before checkout is crucial.
Online shopping already represents a global total of 3.5 trillion dollars, and the sector is expected to account for almost a quarter of all world trade by 2023.
If expectations were already positive pre-pandemic, Covid-19 and the strong migration of consumers and retailers to digital as a result of the strong measures to contain the pandemic have created a scenario that not even the most optimistic analysts dared to predict.
According to a study by 451 Research on consumer trends during the pandemic, 80% of consumers have shopped online during the pandemic, which means, the study concludes, that "retailers can't afford to lose out". online sales due to an unsatisfactory payment experience".
This is exactly what another study says, this time of the SaleCycleon how the coronavirus is affecting the world. e-commerce. This research depicted a pre-pandemic scenario in which there was a staggering 88% rate of customer abandonment of an online shopping basket at the checkout stage. For example, around 38% of British consumers abandoned an online shopping basket with products at least once a week.
Just to give you an idea, if online businesses were able to reduce the abandonment rate even slightly, they would obtain a cash inflow that can be calculated in the billions of dollars (global total). Even before the increase in online sales due to the pandemic, a study by the Baymard Institute on shopping cart abandonment before checkout, revealed that around 260 billion dollars in potential revenue could be recovered if the online shopping experience, especially at the time of payment, was improved.
This improvement also involves attention to optimising platforms for mobile devices. As you can see from the infographic below, the rate of online shoppers abandoning their cart when shopping on mobile devices is 86% on smartphones and 81% on tablets respectively, slightly higher than the 70% on computers.
The question is: how can we turn these figures into an opportunity to win customers and recover revenue?
The answer comes in the form of 5 strategies that promise to help you retain customers and avoid abandoning your online shopping cart.
5 ways to avoid online shopping cart abandonment
Remove unnecessary checkout steps
The same Baymard Institute report we cited earlier found that, before the pandemic, 26% of American online shoppers abandoned their carts due to complicated and time-consuming checkout processes.
Customers cited unnecessary steps such as:
- Fill in the name and address fields separately;
- Provision of separate home and billing addresses;
- Create an account before purchasing.
The alternative is to invest in payment solutions that are easy to integrate into the platform e-commerce the merchant to avoid redundancies when filling in fields or sending the customer back to a payment page outside the site.
Diversifying the range of payment methods
O e-commerce has become a truly global phenomenon, which means that its platform of online sales presents a wide and varied range of forms of online payment to satisfy not only the needs of its domestic customers, but also international ones.
A recent UPS investigation revealed that 48% of international clients on platforms e-commerce American abandoned a purchase because their preferred payment method wasn't available.
Globally, one in five online shoppers reported similar reactions, with consumers in the Americas and India claiming to prefer card payments.
Tell your customers which cards your business accepts
When it comes to improving the user experience online payment The focus should also be on the clarity and transparency with which we communicate to the potential buyer the card issuing systems that the business accepts.
According to Discoverabout 60% of consumers with credit cards say that they do their research before venturing into an online purchase on sites outside the United States, while 20% of global online shoppers say that not having their preferred payment method on the payment platform is a problem. e-commerce makes them abandon the shopping basket.
And if credit cards and debit are still the most popular payment methods globally when it comes to online purchases, it is important for your business to take a close look at the growth of mobile wallets in the act of shopping. online payment.
Remove account creation at checkout
Continuing with the Baymard Institute study, 34% of online consumers globally justified abandoning their cart before paying because they were required to create a new account.
Consumers demand speed, simplicity and ease when paying for their purchases online and creating a new account is the last thing they expect.
Instead of this requirement, merchants should consider implementing innovative ideas, such as creating a partial account - where only an email and password are required - or a "shopping as a guest" option.
These small changes can play an important role in building customer loyalty to your business and increasing sales.
Tap into the potential of autofill
In the same way that contactless has revolutionised the speed of a wide variety of processes in physical shops, automatic fulfilment provides a faster, simpler and more seamless online shopping checkout experience. It's not just about saving time, sales also benefit as it leads to increased conversion rates.
According to Discover, automatic fulfilment allows for an increase of 25% in new customer submissions and a time saving during the purchase process of up to 30%.
However, in order for your business to get the most out of autofill, this tool must be configured correctly, since delays of seconds when filling in a second or entering information in the wrong fields are worth an abandoned cart in online commerce.
Conclusion
Let simplicity be your guide. Creating a simple, fast and intuitive shopping experience can lead to great rewards, so don't forget:
- Simplify the checkout steps;
- Accept a wide variety of payment methods (and clearly communicate which ones);
- Don't force customers to create an account;
- Optimise your site for autofill.
If online businesses used just a few of these strategies, conversion rates could improve by up to 35% according to the Baymard Institute.
In short, a e-commerce If you're serious about increasing your sales, you should above all try to speed up and improve your customers' shopping experience.
* Article adapted from Discover® Global Network.
