It’s mid March and on the 6th of this month we welcomed our baby boy into this world. He was very speedy, giving us barely enough time to get to hospital. These first weeks with him home have been a massive adjustment but I’m loving it, he’s a pretty relaxed baby.
A few weeks ago, in episode 72, I spoke about improving your website to improve your conversion rate. In today’s episode I want to talk about improving your eComm abandon cart rate.
First up, I want to say that abandon carts are normal. Not everyone is going to checkout and buy from your store, and that’s ok. That’s all part of being in business.
Secondly, there are benchmarks, or average numbers for abandon cart rates that you should be familiar with so that you limit your disappointment and know that your store is performing at a certain level.
Let’s first talk about what an abandoned cart actually means.
Basically, it’s when someone visits your store and adds something to their shopping cart but doesn’t check out. Aka, they don’t purchase and leave the store.
The average abandon cart rate of an ecommerce store is 68%, so out of 100 people adding something to their cart, 68 are going to leave their cart and not purchase.
That seems like a really high number, and that’s why eComm store owners are often disheartened. So let’s look at ways to improve your store so more people checkout.
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Transcript
Hello, and welcome to the new school of marketing podcast. It’s mid March and on the 6th of this month we welcomed our baby boy into this world. He was very speedy, giving us barely enough time to get to hospital. These first weeks with him home have been a massive adjustment but I’m loving it, he’s a pretty relaxed baby.
A few weeks ago, in episode 72, I spoke about improving your website to improve your conversion rate. In today’s episode I want to talk about improving your eComm abandon cart rate.
First up, I want to say that abandon carts are normal. Not everyone is going to checkout and buy from your store, and that’s ok. That’s all part of being in business.
Secondly, there are benchmarks, or average numbers for abandon cart rates that you should be familiar with so that you limit your disappointment and know that your store is performing at a certain level.
Let’s first talk about what an abandoned cart actually means.
Basically, it’s when someone visits your store and adds something to their shopping cart but doesn’t check out. Aka, they don’t purchase and leave the store.
The average abandon cart rate of an ecommerce store is 68%, so out of 100 people adding something to their cart, 68 are going to leave their cart and not purchase.
That seems like a really high number, and that’s why eComm store owners are often disheartened. So let’s look at ways to improve your store so more people checkout.
Your first task is to look at what your abandon cart rate actually is. You can find this by looking at the number of adds to cart – the number of purchases / number of ads to cart x 100. This will give you a percentage.
Now you know your starting point, and I recommend that you measure this regularly to see if you’re going up or down.
The next step is to look at ways to decrease your abandon cart rate, and we can do this by looking at on-site conversion assists and off-site conversion assists. The first looks at what happens when people are on your website, the second focuses on what happens when people leave your website.
To look at your on-site conversion assists you can look at a number of things on your website, such as:
Shipping costs
If you’ve ever shopped online, you’re probably familiar with shipping and you might feel a certain way about it. Most people don’t like surprises and unexpected shipping costs is one of the top reasons why people abandon their carts.
That’s why you need to be upfront about your shipping costs and ideally create a way for people to access free shipping. Whether it’s by creating a value above which shipping is free, or offering a flat rate for all orders.
Know-like-trust
Us marketers speak about the know-like-trust factor a lot. By the time people start adding to their carts they’re mostly at the trust stage. They might have been following your brand for a while and are now ready to take the next step, or are they?
Another top reason people abandon their carts is because of a lack of trust. They need to trust that the product you’re selling is as good as you say it is, that’s why your copy, messaging, images, and all of the information you have on your website needs to address people’s objections.
They need to know what their options are if they don’t like it. They need to know what will happen when they order, how long will it take for them to receive it, what are the steps?
People need to know that their details are safe, that their payments are safe and that the product will arrive and is what you say it is. Address all of this on your website with copy, badges, testimonials and other elements that show that you can be trusted.
Testimonials
One of the biggest ways to show that you can be trusted is by giving social proof. Show people that others have bought your product and were happy with it. Ask your buyers for testimonials and get them to rate and review your product. The more testimonials and ratings, the better.
The next way to improve your abandon cart rate is to look at what you can do off-site.
Not each abandon cart is because the person didn’t want to buy it.
There are many reasons why someone abandons their cart. They could be shopping on their phone but want to checkout on their computer (this is me), or maybe their kids call them away (also me), or they’re a bit overwhelmed with the choices and need more time to think about it… Or something else.
Life gets in the way.
They might still want to buy from you but they’ll forget, because life is busy.
This is where off-site conversion tactics come into play. It’s up to you to convince them to come back to your site and finish what they started.
One way is by email sequences and automations.
Abandon cart emails are super powerful, so make sure you set these up to go out automatically. As soon as someone abandons their cart, your system should send an email to remind them to checkout.
I recently got distracted at the checkout and after 3 emails from the business I finally managed to prioritise buying the product and hand over my money. These sequences really do work, and not just on me.
Facebook & Instagram retargeting ads
Now we’re venturing into my territory. Facebook & Instagram ads can be super powerful too in terms of reminding people to checkout.
Have you ever gone to a website, shopped around, then browsed Facebook to see the exact product you looked at?
That’s Facebook retargeting at work, one of my favourite ways to use Facebook ads for ecommerce.
You can use Facebook & Instagram ads to deliver specific ads to people who have abandoned their cart. If you’re curious to know how to set this up, download my free guide and I’ll walk you through it step by step. I’ll put the link in the show notes.
Abandon cart ads generally don’t need a large budget because the audience is quite narrow and small and often generate a high return on ad spend.
Retargeting ads are generally the first type of ad that we set up for clients, because they tend to do so well.
So if your abandon cart rate is high, get started on some of these ways to improve it.
To recap, look at your shipping costs, your ways to build and instill trust, adding social proof to your website and also take things off-site by setting up automated emails and give Facebook & Instagram ads a go.
