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Cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating parts of a sales funnel. You work hard to create irresistible offers; they take the bait and head to the point of purchase only to abandon the cart and disappear.
What you need to be able to do is use your cart abandonment statistics to work out why they failed to complete the transaction.
Understanding this information can help you increase conversions and reduce your abandoned cart rate.
Here are 15 key metrics regarding cart abandonment to get your head around:
1. General cart abandonment rate
Depending on where you look, data on shopping cart abandonment rates across all industries varies wildly.
The Baymard Institute collated 41 different data sources and the most accurate figure was 69.57% abandonment rate in all sectors.
Of course, this is not set in stone. Some places suffer an extremely high cart abandonment of 80%, while others are as low as around 55%.
Translated, this means up to 7 out of 10 customers will abandon their cart and fail to complete the transaction, which is understandably a worrying number.
2. Mobile cart abandonment rate.
Cart abandonment is even higher when the customer is using a mobile phone; across all industries, this comes in at about 85.65%, which again is not a good rate for any business.
It’s important to address this statistic because more people are using smartphones than desktops when it comes to online shopping.
Therefore, it’s vital that you optimise your e-commerce store for mobile phone users, and there are several things you need to check:
- Mobile site speed
- Clear and easy to read copy with essential information quickly visible
- Simple and intuitive layout
- Secure checkout process
3. $18 billion lost in sales revenue annually.
Various sources have run the numbers, and a whopping $18 billion is lost annually because of abandoned carts. This is potential sales revenue that was never realised. That’s a lot of potential income and sales that businesses can ill-afford to do without.
4. Optimising checkout increases conversions.
After those rather depressing statistics, let’s have a good number…
If you optimise your checkout process you can increase conversion rates by up to 35.62%
When we talk about optimising your checkout, you want to be looking at issues around simplifying the process, rewarding customer loyalty, and adding extra tools to make it easier, like size guides.
5. Watch hidden costs.
The Baymard Institute also looked at why carts were being abandoned. This was done by questioning the shoppers, and the results were clear:
- More than 50% of those questioned said the main reason they abandoned their cart was that they were suddenly faced with extra charges, like taxes, shipping costs and fees that they did not expect.
- For this reason, it is encouraged that transparency on all shipping and taxing costs is easy to find up front.
- 34% abandoned their cart because it required an account to be created.
- Slow delivery, long checkout process, distrust of the site and unclear total amounts made up the other main reasons.
6. Account creation leads to 34% cart abandonment.
With 34% of people abandoning their cart because they were required to create an account, we’re going to give this its own mention.
Customer accounts are designed to be a helpful way for people to track their orders and encourage return purchases.
However, if you only intend to make a one-off order, being able to checkout as a guest without having to feed through all the account creation information makes a lot of sense and clearly, 34% of cart abandonment customers agree.
If you do not already have this facility at your checkout, consider adding it now!
7. Slow loading times.
People are inherently impatient, and digital shoppers are among some of the worst. Over 57% of people will abandon the cart if they have to wait more than three seconds for the next page to load.
Of these customers, 80% won’t bother to try again because they will have you tagged as a slow-loading site for which they can’t be bothered to wait.
Site speed time is vital, and you need to make sure every page loads in under three seconds.
8. Too many boxes.
Another reason people tend to abandon a cart is that it’s taking too long to get through the checkout process.
26% of shoppers abandon their carts due to complicated or long checkout processes.
Collecting information is vital for customer profiling and targeting, but if there are too many fields to fill in (and, on average, there are just over 23 boxes to fill for new customers and just under 15 for guest checkout), the customer will lose interest and disappear.
Think carefully about how much information you really need from a customer and streamline any automated and auto-fill processes.
9. Optimised pages work.
What does an optimised checkout flow look like? Bringing the boxes down to around 12 elements for new customers and 7 for guest checkouts certainly leads to a much lower cart abandonment rate.
Instead of asking the customer for their first name and then their second name, have one box for the full name. Take out any optional fields, and if you cannot have an address lookup that will auto-fill when they start typing, just have one address line field.
10. The curse of re-entry.
Not only do customers find it frustrating when they are faced with a myriad of boxes to fill in, but they also hate repetition.
55% of shoppers will abandon their cart if they have to re-enter shipping information and credit card information.
Ensuring your checkout process pre-populates the shipping information with the billing address is a good starting point. There will be the odd person who is not purchasing for delivery to the same address, but the majority will be.
Also, make sure any credit card or financial information only needs to be entered once.
11. Discount codes.
Did you know that 75% of shoppers expect to be offered a discount code?
Over 90% of transactions use coupons at checkout and if these don’t work, 46% of shoppers will abandon their cart.
Discount codes and coupons are an excellent way to entice new business and encourage return customers, but only if they work.
Consider offering these discounts, but make sure they sail smoothly through the checkout to ensure that carts are not abandoned.
12. Optimised for mobile.
We have mentioned this once already, but it is absolutely vital that you optimise your site for mobile phone users.
4 out of 10 mobile phone users will abandon their cart if they cannot easily input the information.
Not only do you have the standard issues to consider here, but small screens and small buttons lead to frustration if the checkout process is not quick and easy.
This is another reason why you should limit the amount of information you are trying to collect and ensure your site is mobile responsive with large icons and buttons that make it easy to input the right information quickly.
13. Use retargeted ads.
What about the shoppers who abandon their carts? Does that mean you will never see them again?
Retargeted ads can be your best friend here. 75% of customers respond to re-targeted ads, and 26% of those will actually click through and go back to your site, hopefully, to finally make a purchase.
14. Make the retargeted ads personal.
If you want to improve the re-target rate even more, consider personalising the ads you send out.
Rather than just saying you noticed they were on your site but did not complete their purchase, the smart money is on adding a targeted advert for the items they left behind.
Not only does it remind them that you exist, but it shows them the items they fell in love with the first time, causing them to rethink the decision not to purchase. Statistics show that this can generate an ROI of over 1300%.
15. Use Google Display Network and Facebook for Retargeting.
Over half of all Internet users have Facebook. 90% of Internet users are reached by the Google Display Network. Facebook shows a page view of 1 trillion per month, and Google Display Network has 180 billion views.
This is definitely where you want to be when it comes to retargeting adverts for abandoned carts!
The takeaway.
When you initially look at it, cart abandonment rates seem ridiculously high, with up to 7/10 shoppers walking away before completing their purchase.
However, by focusing on your checkout procedure and addressing other key points mentioned in the article, you should be able to prevent many lost sales and instead close the deal.
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