abandoned baskets

How to avoid abandoned baskets

Customer Experience

Cart abandonment statistics feels like failing at the last hurdle

The customer got to the site. They found the items they wanted and were happy with the price. They made a selection… and then quit. Someone called them for dinner. They were looking for a credit card and got distracted. They intended to go through with the purchase following their next payday but forgot.

Make sure options at checkout are upfront, clear and concise, with regards to costs, shipping and returns.

Run regular analytics and remain on the pulse with developments in UI and payments: recent regulations or popular new providers, for example. Website crashes, performance issues, and lack of mobile-optimisation can drive customers away, but are all eminently fixable.

Finally, when it comes to upselling: find a balance that is helpful, before becoming pushy. Upselling should assist customers in finding related, relevant products - not foist extra things on them. Excessive upselling can scare otherwise satisfied customers away, or even project a sense of greed. 

It’s also simply not popular among consumers: only about 15% of customers actually want to hear about other offers when they’re already making a purchase, according to MarketWatch


Should all else fail, there are solutions available post-abandonment.

The most effective of which is perhaps the humble follow-up email. 

Figures from marketing software company Moosend show that 40% of these emails get opened, half are clicked on, and a further half go back and make the purchases they abandoned at first. Put simply, following a short email enquiring after an abandoned cart, businesses found that around 10% of those customers ended up coming back. A brilliant return, given the minor expense involved.

Finally, it’s worth noting that not every abandoned cart represents a failure.  Sometimes it saves an expensive headache. Retailers with large, important items - like furniture - should expect a portion of cart abandonment to represent consumers in a process of research and deliberation: experimenting with options and leaving the site to conduct more research, before making a purchase. 

There is a risk that they end up buying from a competitor while looking around at different options. Potentially lost business could be recovered by providing that information on-site, and giving customers the ability to experiment with colour, texture, fabric, for example, online.

Cart abandonment is sometimes an easy fix. Sometimes it is bad UX, neglecting certain options or flexible policies. Other times it’s quite nuanced: providing the right information at the right time to secure the sale. The most important thing is to be clear and upright with customers - and not try to squeeze as much value out of every transaction as possible. That’s the customer’s job.

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