Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment With This Audit Strategy

For e-commerce merchants, cart abandonment isn’t just frustrating; it’s a revenue killer. You know the old saying about the horse and water? Well, you can build out your site, list your products, and get customers to your site, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll convert. In fact, the data shows that, on average, just 30% of customers will convert after adding products to their carts. 

By auditing our data and conducting industry research, we pinpointed key issues and developed strategies to improve conversion rates. We wanted to share our insights and provide a behind-the-scenes look at our meticulous auditing process.

Here’s how to tackle cart abandonment — the RedTree way.

What Is The Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?

First, let’s contextualize the problem. According to the Baymard Institute, the shopping cart abandonment rate is a whopping 70.19% on average. 

Despite the data, there’s no hard and fast rule that you have to accept the bulk of your customers leaving their carts to gather dust. In fact, the client that prompted this deep dive into cart conversion rates was hitting the 30% conversion rate exactly.

Hitting the average is great, but — we also saw an opportunity for growth. So, we took a deeper dive into the cart abandonment problem across the e-commerce industry. 

What Are The Most Common Reasons For Cart Abandonment?

In general, a high cart abandonment rate is a symptom of a problem that goes a lot deeper. At their core, these abandonments often point to flaws in the user experience (UX), user interface (UI), store pricing, and the overall shopping journey. 

To identify the root of the issue, you can simply run through the checkout process yourself and note any pain points. However, it takes real user data to make informed decisions about how to best optimize and streamline the shopping experience for your customers.  

At RedTree, we use various tools that provide data-backed insights into how customers use a website, including a breakdown of the actions they took before leaving their carts.

UX/UI Issues

Cart abandonment rates are heavily influenced by issues related to UI/UX. 

UI relates to the website’s visual design and interactive elements, while UX encompasses the overall ease and satisfaction a user feels throughout their shopping journey. 

Poorly executed UI/UX can disrupt the shopping experience, causing customers to leave their carts before completing a purchase. Here’s a look at the most common UX and UI issues that may cause customers to abandon their carts: 

• Mandatory account creation. Customers tend to have a fear of commitment when it comes to the online shopping experience, so consider providing guest checkout options alongside account creation options to meet the needs of all your customers. 
• Long or confusing checkout process. Keep the checkout process short and efficient. Remember, if your checkout process is inconvenient, your customers will find other options.
• Site speed and app performance issues. Again, if your site isn’t convenient to use, your customers aren’t going to use it. Further, site issues degrade the trust in your site and can scare customers off with security concerns.
• Payment security concerns. Keep your site’s SSL certificate active, handle bugs quickly, and utilize clean copy, free of errors, to increase customer trust in your site’s security.
• Lack of desirable payment options. It’s 2024; customers expect to be able to pay however they want, including Apple Pay, PayPal, credit/debit card options, Buy Now, Pay Later options, and more. 

Pricing Issues

In today’s competitive e-commerce landscape, pricing and competition are critical factors to consider when investigating cart abandonment rates. Customers are constantly on the lookout for the best deals, especially as inflation has skyrocketed. 

Striking the right balance between maintaining healthy profit margins and offering competitive pricing can be challenging but essential. Here are some common pricing-related reasons why customers may abandon their carts and how to address them: 

• No discounts or promo codes. Customers love a good deal. Providing promotional discounts, even for new customers, can be a great incentive. Consider offering a discount for email sign-ups, like 10% off their first purchase.
• Comparison shopping. Your products don’t exist in a vacuum. Customers constantly compare prices and options. Make sure you know your competition and understand your customer base to stay competitive.
• Unexpected shipping costs. Sticker shock at checkout can turn customers away. Ensure shipping costs aren’t higher than the purchase itself. Offering multiple shipping options, including free shipping, can help reduce cart abandonment.

Store Policy & Limitations

While some cart abandonment issues can be categorized under UX or pricing, store policies and limitations play a significant role as well.

These policies, while sometimes necessary for business operations, can inadvertently push customers to abandon their carts. Here are some specific policy-related reasons why customers might leave their carts behind and how to address them:

• Product quantity restrictions. Sometimes, you need to limit product quantities to prevent customers from taking advantage of your prices and to maintain inventory control. Assess whether you need to have these restrictions in place, and remove any that may have been arbitrarily enacted. 
• Ambiguous return and refund policy. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Customers will scrutinize your return and refund policies before proceeding with their purchases. Make sure your policies are clear and detailed to build trust and reduce abandonment rates.
• Longer than expected delivery times. Offering the speediest and most cost-effective shipping options possible is crucial to your shop’s success. Customers are likely to abandon their carts if delivery times are longer than expected, so ensure you offer a variety of shipping options to keep them satisfied.

Applying Data To Reduce Cart Abandonment Rates (An IRL Example)

Ready to see theory in action? This isn’t just abstract advice; we used this method to drill down into specific pain points in our client’s checkout process. 

While this client’s checkout process was free of any issues related to store policies, there were some issues related to UX/UI and pricing. Fortunately, for each pain point that we observed, we were able to provide actionable optimization advice. 

Here’s a look at some observations and recommendations made during our audit.

1. Observation: Navigation Issues

Users frequently added products to their cart and were automatically redirected to the cart page. After being redirected, many users navigated back to the top navigation to search for additional products, repeating this process multiple times.

• Recommendation: Disable automatic redirection to the cart page. Instead, display a notification that the product has been added to the cart. This will allow users to continue shopping seamlessly and will strengthen website navigation. Also, make the “Continue Shopping” button on the cart page more prominent for better visibility.

2. Observation: Prohibitive Shipping Costs

Some users clicked on the site’s “Calculate Shipping” button and likely abandoned the cart due to high shipping costs. In a test checkout, the shipping cost was higher than the product cost. I found the same product on Amazon with free shipping.

• Recommendation: Review and optimize shipping costs to be more competitive.

3. Observation: Hard To Find Refund Policy

Users were seen scrolling up and down the page multiple times, clearly looking for specific information before checking out or dropping off. Heatmap data shows that users read through the refund policy before checking out or dropping off. 

• Recommendation: Add the refund policy and shipping information, prominently on the shopping cart and checkout pages. Ideally this could be a popup, so they don’t navigate away from checkout. 

Increase Cart Conversions For Your eCommerce Business

Ready to see fewer abandoned carts and more completed purchases? 

Our UX-driven services are designed to enhance your eCommerce business, from intuitive UX Web Design to our iterative BLOSSOM strategy and insightful Data Analysis. 

Interested in how we can help you increase cart conversions and drive business success?

Let’s chat — we’re excited to talk all things UX.