Even if your e-tail store’s shoppers abandon their carts, all is not lost
One might have imagined that, given everything we have learned about the dynamics of ecommerce customers’ behaviour over the years, online stores might have succeeded in driving down rates of cart abandonment.
And yet, statistics indicate online shopping cart abandonment rates worldwide may have actually increased in recent years, reaching more than 70% in 2024.
Why are so many shoppers abandoning carts when using online stores?
A survey in 2024 of more than 1,000 US adults who had abandoned a shopping cart during the last three months, found that “extra costs” – such as shipping, taxes, and fees – was the most commonly cited reason for abandonment, being mentioned by 48% of respondents.
It was followed in the list of abandonment reasons by the given site requiring an account (26%), the customer not trusting the site with their credit card information (25%), and delivery being too slow (25%), among many other factors.
Website design and usability can be factors in cart abandonment – but not the only ones
Looking down the fuller list of reasons cited for cart abandonment in the above research – sourced from the Baymard Institute, a web usability research institute – provides fascinating insights.
Some of the mentioned reasons are clearly of direct relevance to how the given ecommerce store is designed and developed. For example, 22% of respondents cited a lengthy/complicated checkout as a reason for them abandoning a cart, while 17% claimed the given website had errors or crashed.
However, other reasons provided by those surveyed, such as the aforementioned additional costs, or the returns process being unsatisfactory (18% claiming this), are not so obviously connected to website usability.
This, combined with the evidence that ecommerce managers have not been greatly successful over the years in reducing rates of shopping cart abandonment, suggests it is important not to think of cart abandonment as purely a symptom of e-tail site design and usability issues.
Are you taking a holistic approach to tackling cart abandonment in your online store?
If you are worried about seemingly high numbers of your ecommerce shop’s prospective customers deciding to abandon their cart instead of completing a purchase, one of the biggest switches that you need to make may well be a philosophical one.
Or to be more specific: are you presently treating people who abandon carts in your store as lost opportunities, or instead as warm leads?
After all, if someone browsed your store only to abandon their cart, the evidence is there of them having some level of interest in your business’s offerings. So, there could be scope to target the people who didn’t complete the purchase process, and even to bring them back to your store to convert them into paying customers.
What methods might you use for recapturing people who abandoned their cart?
One popular and effective way to help recover a sale that might otherwise have been lost forever, is sending a sequence of cart abandonment emails to the customer. Leading ecommerce platforms such as PrestaShop make it possible to send such emails in an automated fashion.
Other online business owners might turn to such options as retargeting ads and even text messaging – or a combination of all the above. Through the testing and optimisation of such methods, you can help determine which approaches are likely to be best for your online store and its audiences.
If you have been comparing your options for website design, search engine optimisation, graphic design, and/or software development services in Gibraltar, the UK, or Spain, we would be pleased at Piranha Designs to meet you for a free, no-obligation discussion of your needs. We can greatly assist you in building a website and online presence that delivers results.
