On average, over 68% of shoppers in the fashion industry abandon their carts and leave a site without completing their purchase. That means around 7 out of 10 visitors on your eCommerce site never turn into paying customers. Furthermore, with traffic getting increasingly expensive online nowadays, these are signs of real trouble. Cart abandonment is like going to the store, picking out what you like, deciding that it’s just not worth it, and leaving empty-handed. Now imagine how much easier it is to do this online. On top of that, cart abandonment accounts for $4.6 trillion lost eCommerce revenue each year.
Calculating cart abandonment
Thankfully cart abandonment is easy to calculate.
Cart Abandonment Rate formula:
(1 – (#Completed transactions / #Initiated sales)) * 100
For example, Say your website store had 1,000 sales in the last month. The number of initiated shopping carts that did not result in a purchase was 5,000. By subtracting the division of the two numbers from one, you realize that 80% of shoppers didn’t complete their transactions this month.
(1 – (1,000 ÷ 5,000)) * 100 = 80%
Naturally, it’s hard to get visitors to buy the first time they come across your site. Instead, it is easier to get them to buy the second and third and fourth time, etc. That’s why conversion rate is so important. For fashion brands, this represents a huge lost opportunity. Especially when you consider the costs and the effort it takes to get people interested in your products in the first place. Pouring money into branding, content creation, social media marketing, and SEO just to get those potential customers on your site, then optimizing their journey is a huge cost. All of this has a huge toll on your bottom line if you let 68% of visitors leave without making a purchase.
Some of these concerns include a lack of trust in the brand, lack of interest in the product, and not finding what they need. Hence, to tackle this, here are some cart abandonment solutions to help you reduce abandonment rates and reclaim some of those lost sales.
How to Track your Cart Abandonment Rate
1. Use analytics to track your cart abandonment rate
To track cart abandonment, you have the option of using various analytics tools. For starters, you can integrate your ecommerce store with Google Analytics. First, you’ll need to set up an account and get started with Google Analytics. Once you’ve signed up and logged in, you’ll need to enable ecommerce tracking on your ecommerce site and connect it to Google Analytics.
Undoubtedly, many ecommerce site platforms have built-in analytics tools that give you basic data on customer behavior. Most of these are relatively basic. To get more analytics data, especially data specific to cart abandonment – you may want to use a more sophisticated tool.
While Google Analytics is a popular, reliable option, there are also other means. Depending on the platform you operate your ecommerce store through, different analytics tools may give you better reporting options. Below are some other popular tools in the market.
Other Popular Analytics Tools
- Adobe Commerce Business Intelligence is ready right out of the box, with ecommerce dashboards designed to give you the most from your data.
- BigCommerce Abandoned Cart Report displays statistics about abandoned carts on your BigCommerce store from all users, including guests.
- WooCommerce does not have built-in analytics, but you can easily integrate it with an analytics tool such as Google Analytics.
- Any Shopify store on the Basic Shopify plan or higher will have access to behavior reports. To have access to the website cart analysis report, you need to be on the Shopify plan or higher.
You can read more about tracking cart abandonment rates here.
How To Improve Cart Abandonment Rate
1. Enable flexible payment options
Every consumer has different financial needs and preferences. That’s why it’s important to offer a variety of payment options. This includes credit cards, debit cards, direct bank transfer, mobile wallets, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) providers, and more. By allowing customers to pay with their preferred and most-trusted payment method, you create trust in your brand.
Following the rising trend, brands are adopting BNPL services. The main draw of BNPL services is that consumer’s purchases become more affordable instantly. Consumers only need to pay a third of the price up front and settle their two remaining instalments on their respective payment due date — all without extra fees and charges. Some popular BNPL providers are listed below:
2. Use social commerce platforms to increase social proof
If a customer is hesitating about a purchase – for example, if it’s a big purchase or from an unknown brand — creating trust is a significant way to remove the uncertainty and fight shopping cart abandonment.
In the world of online shopping, 61% of customers read reviews before making a purchase. 66% said they were more likely to make a purchase when it’s accompanied by social proof. Hence, using a social commerce platform that validates social proof and leads to purchases should be a key priority.
Social Commerce Platforms
Instagram is important to showcase bits of social proof. Constantly highlighting user generated content helps to show new customers some of your existing customers from a brand’s perspective. Instagram livestream helps to tell your brand story and engage new customers when they are hesitating about a purchase.
- Shopform
If you want to showcase community driven social proof, not to toot our own horn, Shopform is the best, novel way to do it. Shopform allows customers to see all the user generated content from other customers that helps to strengthen social proof for your brand and build genuine and authentic relationships. By carting out within the same app, Shopform reduces the customer’s friction from social proof to purchase. You can register for a free brand account via the form here:
3. Retargeting Campaigns
Online shoppers often add items to their basket, or start the checkout process but don’t complete it for various reasons. It could be a technical issue, they may just be researching, or they may just not need to make the purchase yet. One of the most effective ways of reminding them to come back is to use email, SMS, push notifications, or paid advertising. SMS communications have an immediacy that emails may not. Furthermore, one study found that 95% of texts will be read within just 3 minutes of being sent. However, brands should be careful with asking consumers to opt-in to these messages first before sending, in accordance to PDPC rules.
Email remains one of the most effective marketing tools, but customers expect more than just a mass marketing mailout. It needs to be deployed in a personalized, relevant way that makes the customer feel like they’re not being spammed, but looked after. Once they’re back onsite, you can welcome them and guide them seamlessly back to where they left off. Cart abandonment emails increase purchases 19 times more than standard marketing emails.
Push notifications and paid advertising are other ways to bring your customers back. The advantage of paid advertising is that it is timely as they can be retargeted immediately after leaving your site. This is because it is specific to a particular page on your site, and behavior-based. But not all users are comfortable with sharing their phone number or email address, fearing misuse. This is one of the reasons why it is easier to get users to subscribe to push notifications. The opt-in rate of web push notifications is 30X higher than email.
A Nudge Is All It Takes
Cart abandonment is a crucial issue that we can mitigate, to prevent potentially huge losses for brands like yourself. Moving forward, the first step is to track and understand your cart abandonment rates with proper analytics tools for your brand. And to give shoppers that little push in completing their purchasing journey, remember these 3 tips – enable flexible payment options so they feel less of a pinch, increase social proof to create greater trust, and test and reiterate retargeting campaigns. Sometimes, a small nudge is all it takes!