Are you trying to reduce cart abandonment for your WooCommerce business? Cart abandonment represents the most significant loss of revenue for most eCommerce companies. But what makes people leave their potential purchases behind? BizPrint discusses effective solutions to minimize cart abandonment for your WooCommerce site.
Reasons Behind Cart Abandonment
There are several reasons for cart abandonment, ranging from a poor buying experience to unexpected prices. Here are the top reasons for potential customers leaving their carts behind.
Unexpected Shipping Costs & Fees
How often have you reached the final purchase only to find that your shipping costs were astronomically high? Unexpected shipping fees can often put off a potential customer just as they are about to make that all-important purchase. Customers often select an item because it sits within the price they are willing to pay. Sudden shipping costs can take the product out of the customer’s price range.
Setting Up A User Account
Many businesses try to leverage the sales process as an opportunity for users to create an account. This is great in theory but requires an effective landing page form to avoid slowing up the purchase process for the user. Even then, the steps it takes to set up a user account can slow up the purchase time and lead to potential card abandonment. Make it easy for users to check out under a guest checkout for speedy purchasing.
Payment Security
Potential customers need to trust your site’s credibility. WooCommerce can help you to demonstrate your commitment to keeping customer data secure by allowing customers to make purchases on the site using the last four digits of their credit card. WooCommerce allows customers to create a ‘token’ of their credit card, which is used to make a purchase but doesn’t physically store your customer’s data on WooCommerce. This promotes payment security by ensuring that their credit card details are not stored on the site.
Difficult Checkout Experience
The more web pages between your customer’s decision to buy an item and their buying it, the more likely they’ll abandon their cart. At the point the customer decides to make a purchase, you need to make it as easy as possible for them to purchase the product. Multiple web pages increase customer frustration and the time it takes them to reach that final checkout, significantly increasing the chances of cart abandonment.
No Express Shipping
The impulse decision behind someone making a purchase is also influenced by how quickly that item will arrive on their doorstep. Long shipping times or unclear delivery dates will lead to high cart abandonment. Lack of express shipping will also make people question whether it’s worth waiting for your product to arrive. The order fulfillment process needs to be as efficient as possible to entice customers to make that final purchase.
Broken Coupon Or Promo Codes
Many customers with a promo code will make an order because of the discount offered. A broken code as they try to make their purchase will often lead them to abandon their cart. Coupons and promo codes are a great way to reward repeat customers, and a broken code will negatively impact their loyalty to your brand.
How To Prevent Card Abandonment In WooCommerce
You need to understand your customers to gain an accurate insight into cart abandonment. Maintaining customer relationships and providing them with what they need is the most effective way to help them make that purchase.
Soliciting Customer Feedback
You can obtain customer feedback through questionnaire plugins. This can help you leverage key data on:
- What your customer thinks you are doing well
- What they think you can improve on
- How to improve your purchase process
- How to reduce customer attrition
Customer data can help you personalize marketing campaigns, identify your different customer groups and spot your best-selling products.
Target Specific Customer Groups
Customer segmentation refers to identifying different customer groups, which allows you to determine which items appeal to which demographic. For example, if you run a fitness coach business and want to launch a new online yoga program, your first instinct may be to target all of your existing customers with the same marketing. However, by segmenting your customers, you can create a different marketing campaign for those who are most likely to sign up (such as those who already do pilates) and those who are likely to need more convincing (such as those who only do CrossFit). Overall, customer segmentation helps minimize cart abandonment as it helps you to curate marketing campaigns and tailor cross-selling to suit particular customers.
Follow Up With Customers
A follow-up email to customers can help you understand where you can optimize the checkout process and even entice them back to your site. Offering promo codes or discounts might see them completing their order, while a dedicated landing page form can help gather customer information directly. Learn from their abandoned carts and make improvements from their feedback.
Give Your Customers The Answers They Need
Your customer wants to feel informed when they make their purchase. That means they must have access to critical business and product information well before checkout. Lack of information can make your business seem less credible, ultimately damaging your business reputation.
Keep your customers up-to-date by:
- Creating comprehensive product specifications and descriptions
- Adding a detailed FAQ page to your website to clarify questions like:
- Shipping times
- Refund and returns policies
- WooCommerce plugins that help answer customer queries in real-time
- Updating on any supply chain issues on social media
If your customer can find the answer to all their questions as part of the purchase process, they are far more likely to make it through to the checkout.
Optimizing Customer Checkout
The customer checkout is the final hurdle to making a purchase. Ensuring that it is easy to navigate, has transparent costs, and has multiple currencies available will help personalize the experience for your customer. Fortunately, WooCommerce has checkout templates that provide an easy journey from checkout to billing and allow you to toggle between several different payment and shipping options quickly. The more shipping and payment options, the greater the chance of a final purchase.
Get Your Order Fulfillment Right
Order fulfillment is the customer journey from sales inquiry through to product delivery. The final steps of the order fulfillment process are what stop customers from generating repeat business:
- Long delivery times – clear and quick delivery times often make a huge difference in ensuring customer retention. If supply chain issues beyond your control are causing a delay, make sure your wait times are transparent on your site.
- Shipping costs early in the sales process – implementing shipping costs at the start of the sales process will help customers factor in the price at the beginning of their sales journey. Including them on the checkout page is often frustrating and off-putting for a customer.
- Slow refunds – a slow refund purchase will stop customers from buying with you. If the returns process seems easy to navigate, your customer may be more likely to take the risk of purchasing an item.
- Unclear returns policy – if you do not leave clear instructions on returning items, your customers are less likely to trust your business. Transparency and ease of access to customer returns are significant motivating factors in the purchase process.
- Lack of tracking – can’t see where your order is? Many customers appreciate a straightforward tracking process as part of order fulfillment.
The quicker the journey between sales inquiry to final delivery, the greater the chances you’ll have customers make repeat purchases. Clear returns policies and refunds also help improve customer satisfaction in the long term and ensure they’re more likely to buy from you again.
Making The Most Of The Checkout Page
A WooCommerce checkout page template is a great way to create a straightforward purchase process. But you can also make purchase decisions easier for your customers by implementing several cross-selling and express checkout options.
Use A Buy Now Button
An express checkout option is a great way to increase the chances of an impulse purchase or help a customer that only wants to buy one item. An express checkout significantly decreases customers’ time clicking through to final purchase pages. The longer the time between checking out and putting in billing details, the greater the risk the cart will be abandoned by the customer.
Cross-Selling Useful Items
Cross-selling is highlighting valuable items to your customer at the point of checkout. This is often a critical point in the customer journey, the digital equivalent of purchasing items near the tills. Cross-selling can increase final profits but also minimize cart abandonment due to the value-added options provided to the customer.
Live Support Plugins
A live support plugin at the point of checkout helps customers resolve last-minute inquiries that might otherwise impede their purchase. You may also include a ChatBot service to help answer any last-minute common FAQs or questions. The best WooCommerce customer support plugins allow customers to gain answers to live queries and benefit from automated responses to FAQs.
Final Thoughts
Obstacles to a potential customer’s final purchase can significantly risk cart abandonment. Factors like unforeseen shipping costs, poor payment security, and formal account creation can be the difference between a repeat customer and customer attrition.
Fortunately, there are several different ways that you can reduce the risk of cart abandonment. By understanding your customers, providing live support, and creating a positive order fulfillment experience, you can benefit from reduced cart abandonment in WooCommerce.
