Grow Your Business Online with Webplus Shop!

All online stores experience the problem of abandoned carts. This happens when a potential customer places something in their shopping cart but does not complete the purchase. There are many reasons this happens, some of which are preventable. They include:

• Customer is only browsing and is not ready to purchase yet.
• The shipping and handling charge was too high.
• Your store has to charge sales tax to the customer’s shipping address because of your location.
• The customer does not feel comfortable buying from you.
• Your shopping cart is not easy to navigate.
• It is too long or complicated to checkout of your online store.

Some of these reasons are out of your control. It is normal in all stores, both online and brick-and-mortar, for people to browse and not purchase. They might be comparison shopping or they might be looking to just get ideas on what to buy. They might be looking for a store located in another state to avoid paying sales tax.

Some reasons for abandoning online shopping carts are within your control to improve. Here are some effective things you can do to reduce abandoned carts.

1. Build trust and confidence. Make sure you have your contact details showing in your online store. If a customer has a question, they want to know they can contact you easily with any questions or concerns. Using a simple and easy-to-find “Contact Us” page makes customers feel more confident in your store, while reducing spam you would get by just showing your email address on your website. If your shopping cart software is Webplus Shop, you can verify this on the Settings > Store Settings screen of your Merchant Interface.
2. Make sure your pages download fast. The best way to do this is to make sure your image files are compressed not too large. Many shopping carts rely on the merchant compressing their image files before uploading them to their online store. Others, like Webplus Shop, will do this automatically when the file is uploaded. Also make sure there aren’t too many images on each page. It’s ok if there are a few to show the product and make the website attractive, but if there are a lot of unnecessary graphics, it will slow down the pages and many customers will leave.
3. Explain your return policy clearly. If a customer knows they can return a product within a certain number of days without any hassle, they will be much more likely to complete the purchase. A short statement describing your return policy should be on every page, such as in the footer. It is rare for customers to actually return a product, but they will feel much more confident in ordering if they know they can.
4. Reduce Sticker Shock. Explain your shipping and taxation policies clearly. A brief mention could be in the footer on every page of your online store, along with a more detailed description on a custom page. Your shopping cart should also allow the customer to see estimated shipping and tax costs before checking out. Ideally, it should show this estimate on the shopping cart page, as Webplus Shop does. If you use Webplus Shop, you can create custom pages for this and anything else you need by going to the Appearance > Custom Pages screen in the Merchant Interface.
5. Provide alternative payment methods. Different customers have different preferences for paying online. Some prefer the convenience of entering their credit card number directly in the store. Others prefer to use a payment service like PayPal. And some are simply not comfortable paying electronically and would prefer mailing a check or phoning their payment details to the merchant. If you offer multiple payment methods, barriers some customers perceive in completing the purchase will be reduced.
6. The shorter the checkout process, the better. Most online shopping carts have long, multi-page checkout processes. The customer enters their shipping address on one page, their billing address on another, their payment information on the third and then are asked to confirm on the fourth. This is a very large source of shopping cart abandonment. Many experts say that if you email people who have started the checkout process but abandoned it later, you can email them to encourage their return to complete their purchase. This is an inefficient and unproductive way to handle cart abandonment. The best way is to have the whole checkout on a single, simple page. This shows the customer exactly how easy it is, shows all details at once, and allows them to complete their purchase in the fastest possible time. There is no chasing after them after they quit. One shopping cart that offers this highly effective single-page checkout is Webplus Shop.
7. Offer a reason to return. It is a well established fact that it’s much cheaper and easier to get an existing customer to return than it is to find a new customer. The more repeat business an online store has, the faster it will grow. There are many easy ways to encourage repeat business. One simple way is to offer a coupon after a customer checks out to come back. For example, display a custom message on the Receipt saying something like, “Receive 5% off your next purchase! Enter Coupon Code XXXX when you return.” This can be done easily in Webplus Shop by going to the Settings > Store Settings screen in the Merchant Interface and entering your message in the “Custom Receipt Thank You Message” box. You can create your promotions and coupons in the Marketing > Promotions and Marketing > Coupons screens.

It is also important to measure and track your abandoned carts to know if your efforts are being effective. Analytics software, such as Google Analytics will help you understand your online store traffic patterns. You can also see exactly how many carts are abandoned and what items were in the abandoned carts if you use Webplus Shop by going to the Orders screen in the Merchant Interface and setting the Status field to “Abandoned.”

Periodically reviewing your abandoned shopping carts are an excellent way to measure your online store’s effectiveness in completing sales. While keeping in mind that there are some abandoned carts that cannot be prevented, there are many things you can do to avoid them. Using the right shopping cart software and following the seven suggestions will go a long way to reducing cart abandonment and increasing sales and profits.