According to the Fireclick Index the average conversion rate is 2.2%, with a shopping cart abandonment rate of 67.6%. Improvements in conversion rates is usually the most obvious path for many marketers, the problem is not many marketers know where to start (I’ll cover that in another post) and usually take stabs in the dark hoping to hit the right change that leads to a conversion increase. Most changes using A/B testing and Multivariative testing for conversion improvements is usually done on pages higher up in the funnel on detail pages and category or gallery pages. But to get the most gains an attack on two fronts is best. The first conversion rate army can take on the pages at the top of the funnel but a second regiment should be testing in the other direction from the bottom of the funnel up. Often times marketers stop testing or tracking at the shopping cart page, where more improvement gains can make of break your monthly revenue goals.
However, before you can optimize your shopping cart pages you first must know more about why your prospects might be abandoning. So here are the top 5 reasons.
The top five reasons for eCommerce shopping cart abandonment and how to know if you suffer from them:
- Shipping and handling costs were too high
- I was not ready to purchase the product
- I wanted to compare prices on other sites
- Product price was higher than I was willing to pay
- Just wanted to save products in my cart for later consideration
If this was happening on your website, how would you know? Often eCommerce sites don’t factor in the price of shipping and handling until much deeper in the shopping cart, if this is the case on your site take a look at your web analytics and look at what the bounce rate on that page is compared to other pages in your cart to see if you suffer from this problem.
This is a difficult question to answer but there is an opportunity to sell to this prospect later if you understand the power of follow up.
Set up an auto pop up on exit and ask a question or two in a survey that also captures email to send a follow up offer for a coupon to pull those prospects over.
This is one of those harsh realities online that we as marketers have to live with. But how can you fix this if you don’t know it’s happening?
Take a look at your time on site around the time of competitor sales and cross reference that with the what product detail pages or where ever you’re showing the price and your exit rate for those pages.
This is another one of those tricky soft questions that can only be answered with qualitative information like exit surveys and other feedback tools.
Again the power of follow up here is king. If you can set up an automated email to everyone that has items in their cart you’re sure to increase your bottom line. If you really want to kick your conversion rates up combine this technique with the principal of scarcity and auto empty all carts after 2 weeks but be sure to tell your prospects that in your follow up email. That will give them a reason to come back and buy from you.
Image from Flickr used under creative commons license
The trend is rising in cart abandonment rates – I agree that remarketing via email works – but most carts don’t capture the email address until the potential customer starts the checkout process – you’re idea of the survey pop-up could work – but when people are intent on comparing the offerings of several stores it could be annoying and you risk losing them altogether – It’s a tricky problem
Marty, Thanks for your comment. Price checking and comparison shopping is usually done higher up the funnel on the detail page and or category pages of an eCommerce site, once a prospect gets to the cart page their intent to buy goes way up. My point is that most shopping carts are not set up to persuade, just collect and process but the sale is not over just because the prospect has reached the cart. You’re right it is a tricky problem, like anything else in conversion optimization it’s a balance between helping and not annoying.