How to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment in Your Shopify Store

(Source: Klaviyo)

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What is Shopping Cart Abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment is when a shopper visits an eCommerce website, like Shopify, adds an item to the shopping cart, and exits the website without completing the purchase. The products that are added to the cart but not purchased are considered to be abandoned by the shopper.

How to Calculate the Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate?

eCommerce cart abandonment rates can be calculated and monitored by businesses to understand specific reasons for changes in revenue – whether that be a significant increase or a confusing decrease.

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[1- (Total Number of Completed Transactions ÷ Number of Initiated Sales)] x 100 = Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate

For example, if you have 100 completed transactions and 300 initiated sales, your shopping cart abandonment rate is 66%:

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100 ÷ 300 = 0.33

1 - 0.33 = 0.66

0.66 x 100 = 66%

Why is Shopping Cart Abandonment an Issue?

The whole eCommerce process is all about customer experience at each touchpoint. Both physical retail stores and eCommerce Shopify websites have their benefits and disadvantages. With eCommerce, people have the convenience of sitting at home and shopping without moving.

Compared to retail, some physical experiences can’t be replicated in eCommerce. eCommerce websites have a unique problem that retailers don’t face – shopping cart abandonment.

Reduce Shopify Shopping Cart Abandonment

Increasing eCommerce conversions can be achieved by reducing shopping cart abandonment. While we work hard to drive traffic to our Shopify site with search marketing and other marketing strategies, we often overlook what the traffic did after landing on our site.

User behaviour is key to reducing shopping cart abandonment in Shopify and any eCommerce site, for that matter.

Be consistent with pricing

Communicate pricing and costs early to help keep customers in their carts and moving through the process. The earlier you show the total with all fees, including taxes and shipping, the better.

It isn’t always possible to show the costs before someone logs in or enters their shipping address. In this case, there are still ways to keep the price and contents of the cart at the forefront – from putting details in a sidebar or at the top of the screen, it prevents customers from worrying about added costs.

While shipping can be complicated, you want to make it as clear and simple to your Shopify customers as possible. As early as you can, present shopping policies, free shipping tiers, or flat rates. If you can promote the shipping before customers head to their shopping cart, you’re likely to see a reduced cart abandonment rate.

The more mystery or distractions on your site during the checkout process, the higher risk of losing potential customers and experiencing abandoned carts.

Provide customer service options

There will always be customers with issues or questions about your eCommerce store, products, guarantees and alike. So you want to meet them right when they get stuck – think pop-up FAQs or helpful tips.

With customer service, you want to be mindful of your mobile users. For example, is your Shopify eCommerce store optimised for mobile or tablet? If not, prioritise optimising your store for every device.

To prevent cart abandonment, have a click-to-call button, live chat option, or another helpful customer service option in the checkout process flow. You want to show your eCommerce customers that you are available to help and answer their questions.

Offer guest checkout

One of the most common reasons people abandon their carts on eCommerce stores is that the site requires them to create an account to complete their purpose. Drive higher conversion rates with a guest checkout option.

Making customer accounts mandatory isn’t just a potential hassle, it can also distract them from the main goal, which is getting them to convert. Some Shopify eCommerce stores even require shoppers to verify their email address after creating their account – this adds too many unnecessary steps at the checkout process.

Introducing a guest checkout option makes it easier for new customers to complete their purchases without creating an account. But if your eCommerce store may not be suited for guest checkout, like if your business will struggle to initiate returns, exchanging or refunds without an account, at least give shoppers the option to sign up with a social media account.

Optimise form fields

Do you need your Shopify customers’ surnames? Are their birthday required? Focus on capturing only what you need to make the order and transaction easier.

Make it clear what is required from your customers. Minimise the steps required when they view their cart through to seeing the order confirmation page. Sometimes less is more. While you want to collect leads, you don’t need every detail to do so.

Some form fields can be a factor in abandoned carts and the checkout funnel. You can use multiple tools to monitor what field of your Shopify store is causing the most abandonment. You can also view how long users take to complete the form or fill out specific fields.

When it comes to customer relationship management (CRM) data and other information, follow-ups are reliable and useful – which we’ll discuss in the next section.

Use email marketing

There are various email marketing platforms available, like Klaviyo. You can integrate your eCommerce store with Klaviyo and find the best flows to maintain your CRMs. From optimising your form fields, you use the data collected with forms in hand with your email marketing.

If you’re using Shopify as your eCommerce platforms, there’s a pre-made flow called the abandonment cart flow already in place. You can use the abandoned cart flows as it is set up or make changes before sending emails.

When you create an abandoned cart automation, you need to track two behaviours – a shopper starting a checkout and the shopper completing or not completing their checkout. When someone starts and doesn’t complete the checkout, that’s when you use Klaviyo to send out your abandonment cart email.

Abandoned shopping cart email strategies

It’s important to understand why people abandon carts in the first place. Some issues may refer to your on-site user experience, which can help you determine your abandoned cart strategy.

1. Use a simple reminder

Sometimes shoppers aren’t ready to purchase after adding items to their cart, but giving them a little nudge can remind them how great your product is and encourage them to purchase.

2. Send a discount

If shoppers are on the fence, offering a discount for a certain amount or percentage off their purchase might be the convincing factor that draws your shoppers back in.

3. Offer free shipping

It’s common for shoppers not to proceed with checkout if shipping costs are high, which is where free shipping comes in. Converting to customers is simple and cost-effective with free shipping.

4. Add social proof

You can earn your shoppers’ trust with social proof. Include ratings and reviews of the product they added to their cart and abandoned – communicating the value of your products and creating a fear of missing out (FOMO).

5. Incorporate a loyalty program

Sometimes shoppers are just window shoppers, even if they add products to their cart. Beyond a discount or free shipping, you can convince your customers to complete their purchase using loyalty points they’ve accumulated.

After the Cart Abandonment Strategy

Abandoned cart strategies are crucial for turning Shopify visitors into loyal eCommerce customers. With strategies in place and a focus on email marketing and abandonment cart retargeting, you can improve your Shopify store’s success and increase your customer base. Moving forward from the strategies, focus on your website and areas you can improve to better the user experience.

As a Queenstown based digital agency, we can help you with your abandoned cart strategy and email marketing. Let's chat.