Here on the Datacrushers blog, our focus is on highlighting the best methods and tactics eCommerce retailers can use to fight cart and site-wide revenue abandonment. This is usually done by talking about what eCommerce retailers should do. However, it’s important to occasionally talk about “what not to do” because some things aren’t always so obvious.
There is an old saying that goes “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” Therefore, in this article, we will talk about the things that you should really avoid doing in your efforts to combat cart and site-wide revenue abandonment.
1) Don’t limit How Shoppers Can Pay:
Sometimes, both physical and eCommerce retailers will specifically avoid allowing shoppers to pay with certain credit cards. This is solely because of the processing fees they (retailers) will be charged for a transaction. For better worse, there is a cost of doing business, and credit-card processing fees are one of them. However, the loss of revenue from not accepting a payment method is still much larger than the cost of fees.
This eCommerce retailer offers shoppers many different ways to pay for their purchase.
This non-acceptance of payments is responsible for at least 8% of total cart abandonment – and that’s just wrong in 2018. When it comes to eCommerce retail, shoppers should be able to pay in an assortment of ways that work for them. The common credit-card / PayPal method of payment accepted is just no longer good enough to make a sale. That’s why eCommerce merchants really need to start working with consumer loan financing payment systems from companies like ChargeAfter, Affirm, Bread, and Splitit. These options expand a shopper’s payment ability and purchasing power. Enabling them to spend more while still paying their bills.
2) Don’t Saturate Your Site With Popups:
Popups are good – in moderation. But too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. And overly intrusive popups help drive abandonments (and the use of popup blockers). Multiple popups on the same page, or full-page popups that aren’t alway’s easy to close out, should really be avoided. Worse still, are popups that cover the page during checkout!
Popup’s like the one pictured here are entirely unnecessary during the checkout process.
A small email collection popup, in the corner of the screen during a browsing session offering shoppers a discount, or “send my cart” is fine. But If shoppers can’t view an important part of what it is that they came to see in the first place, then there is no point in using popups as they won’t provide any gains for your business.
3) Don’t Demand Site Registration or Newsletter Subscription:
Really, this shouldn’t have to be mentioned, but forcing shoppers to register with a site to checkout is a surefire way to lose sales. But what’s even worse is, if during the registration process you don’t allow them to opt-out of receiving email newsletters. Sure, newsletters are a great way to boost sales, but they shouldn’t be forced, and they should not be sneakily included as a part of the “terms and conditions” of site registration. Short-sighted tactics such as forced registration are responsible for 37% of cart abandonment.
Forced Account Creation Results In Increased Cart Abandonment
While some countries have regulation about doing these sorts of things, it’s not always the case, so regardless, don’t force it. That’s not how you make sales. If you really want shoppers to register with your site and subscribe to your newsletter, you must take a “carrot and stick” approach to getting them to join. This can be done by offering them exclusive deals on products that they cannot get as guest shoppers.
A good offer can help reduce cart and site-wide revenue abandonment.
4) Don’t Keep Cost’s Hidden:
Sometimes, retailers will purposefully obfuscate a carts total cost from shoppers before they can get to checkout. This is bad because it doesn’t allow shoppers to view just how much they are going to have to pay at checkout. In turn, shoppers may have to delete (or remove) items from their cart that they can’t afford.
Instead, allow shoppers to quickly view their cart and its value without having to get to checkout first. Almost 23% of cart abandonment is caused by shoppers being unable to calculate the cost of their order upfront. Part of that cost is shipping. One way to avoid this, especially if you can’t offer free shipping, is to at least try to offer a standard “flat-rate” shipping option, and then highlight that fact so shoppers know it’s available.
5) Don’t Hide Your Contact Details:
This ties into the previous “don’t” of cart abandonment, but it’s not uncommon for eCommerce Retailers to make it rather difficult for shoppers to find their contact information. Shoppers have questions, and your ability to answer those questions is key to building trust and making sales. In fact, 19% of all cart abandonment is caused by shoppers not trusting a website. Well, unclear or difficult to find contact information does nothing to build trust.
Easy to find contact information is really important when trying to build trust and reduce cart and site-wide revenue abandonment.
Therefore, it should be easy for shoppers to find out, and contact you through the following channels:
- Telephone number:
- Social Media Accounts:
- Email:
Now, aside from the fact that this sort of information should generally be listed in at least one place, if you can tie this into a non-intrusive popup or notification, then you are really doing yourself a huge favor.
In summary:
Avoiding the don’ts of cart abandonment doesn’t have to be a chore. Does it take some introspection and consideration of the usability of your site and how shoppers interact with it? Sure. But the work required to reduce cart and site-wide revenue abandonment is not in and of itself terribly hard to pull off. Taking the right steps today will help you reduce cart and site-wide revenue abandonment in the long run. For everything else, there’s the Datacrushers Revenue Discovery Platform.
Datacrushers
Founded in 2015, Datacrushers uses Machine Learning and A.I. along with NLP to identify and recover revenue loss, cart abandonment and discover new revenue sources across any site. The revenue discovery platform completes the deep ongoing analysis of eCommerce websites by monitoring the three main focal points of any site: The User, Site, and Product.
Unlike traditional “cart abandonment platforms,” Datacrushers does not require shoppers and customers to be logged-in to conduct both on and offsite campaigns. We use a wide range of data-driven and analytics based conversion tools to target the shopper at the right time with the most accurate and effective campaign to drive the sale.
Datacrushers is platform, language, and currency agnostic and requires only a few lines of code to get started therefore delivering an ultra-fast go-to-market with minimal set-up time and tech intervention.
Based out of Jerusalem, Israel, Datacrushers has clients worldwide including, The US, China, Russia, UK, Germany, and more.
