What will you learn from the article?
- What are abandoned carts and how do they affect eCommerce sales?
- Why do customers abandon their shopping carts? What are the most common reasons?
- Which industries have the highest and lowest cart abandonment rates?
- What steps should you take to reduce abandoned carts and win back lost customers?
What are abandoned carts? Why do customers abandon carts? What is the situation regarding abandoned carts across various industries? How can you reduce the number of abandoned carts? We answer all these questions in this article.
What are abandoned carts?
Abandoned carts are a term used in the eCommerce industry and refer to situations where a customer adds a product(s) to their cart but doesn't complete the purchase process. Therefore, abandoned carts occur when a purchase doesn't proceed to the checkout stage.
Abandoned shopping carts – main reasons
Why do customers abandon their shopping carts? To know how to prevent these situations, it's crucial to understand the causes of cart abandonment. What are the most common causes?
The most common reasons for a customer abandoning their shopping cart are:
- Too high (often disproportionate) shipping costs – the customer very often cancels the purchase because the shipping costs turn out to be higher than expected.
- Lack of popular payment methods – if the store does not offer popular, preferred payment methods in a given market, the customer may cancel the purchase.
- Unintuitive ordering process – if too many steps are required to complete the purchase process, customers often feel discouraged and abandon their order. In such a situation, they often seek out a similar product from a competitor.
- Additional costs – if costs arise at the final stage of the purchasing process that the customer was previously unaware of, it is highly likely that they will not complete their order. Such costs may include additional taxes or customs duties.
- Technical issues – if a store isn't performing well, checkout is slow (or doesn't work at all), and customers often abandon their carts. In eCommerce, every second counts.
Abandoned shopping carts across industries
It's worth knowing abandoned cart statistics across various industries. According to the report "Abandoned e-Cart – Why Do Consumers Abandon Online Shopping?", prepared by the Mobile Institute for the Chamber of Digital Economy, the scale of the abandoned cart problem across various industries is as follows:
| Mobile version | Desktop version | |
| Electronics | 21% | 25% |
| Apps and games | 17% | 18% |
| Home furnishings | 16% | 16% |
| Sports and leisure | 13% | 16% |
| Pharmaceutical products | 12% | 16% |
| Fashion | 14% | 18% |
| Automotive | 13% | 13% |
| Beauty | 14% | 18% |
| Culture and entertainment | 14% | 20% |
| Tourism | 12% | 17% |
| Food products | 8% | 12% |
| Children's items | 10% | 16% |
As the table above shows, the highest number of abandoned carts is recorded in the electronics industry, and the lowest in the food industry.
How to reduce abandoned carts?
So the question remains: how can you reduce abandoned carts? How can you recover lost carts? Here are some methods for addressing abandoned carts that are worth exploring. They can be thought of as 5 effective steps to increasing sales:
Optimization of the purchasing process
Optimizing the purchasing process is another step worth considering. Here are a few options to consider:
- visibility of delivery costs and available payment methods
- simplification of forms, i.e. requiring the least possible amount of information from the client
- verification of how checkout works, especially in the mobile version
- If you use cross-selling and up-selling solutions at the checkout stage, make sure that the recommended products match what the customer currently has in their cart
Building trust
Building trust is also a crucial step. If a customer isn't confident that shopping at your store is safe and doesn't consider your store a trusted place, they may be more likely to abandon their carts. How can we build trust?
- stay in touch with customers via chat (this is a very frequently chosen communication option between sellers and buyers)
- share the FAQ section with the most frequently asked questions
- take care of legal issues by having regulations and privacy policy adapted to current regulations
- be transparent – clearly communicate your returns policy and delivery costs
Effective abandoned cart reminder emails
Implementing an abandoned cart reminder email that automatically reaches the customer after a pre-defined timeframe remains a very popular way to combat abandoned carts. It's worth including information in the email, such as a discount or rebate, that will be active for that specific abandoned cart.
A good solution is also to use push notifications if the customer has agreed to them.
Simplifying the purchasing process
If possible, consider simplifying the purchasing process. One-page checkouts are very popular, as they present all steps of the purchasing process on a single page. This approach to checkout guarantees, among other things, faster operation and efficiency. It's also important that orders can be placed in the store without the need to create a customer account – shopping as a "guest" is still preferred by most shoppers.
Returns Policy
According to the report "Abandoned e-shopping cart – Why do consumers abandon online shopping?", developed by the Mobile Institute on behalf of the Chamber of Digital Economy, one of the important reasons for cart abandonment is paid returns. Customers are accustomed to customer-friendly returns policies, meaning the vast majority expect free returns. If possible, as a store owner, consider implementing free returns and inform customers about it – present it as a benefit of shopping at that particular store.
Summary
- Abandoned Cart Definition : Abandoned carts are situations where customers add products to their cart but do not complete the purchase without proceeding to checkout.
- Reasons for cart abandonment : The most common reasons include excessive shipping costs, lack of popular payment methods, non-intuitive purchasing process, additional costs at the end of the process, and technical issues.
- Cart Abandonment Statistics by Industry : The electronics industry has the highest cart abandonment rate, while the food industry has the lowest cart abandonment rate.
- Strategies to reduce cart abandonment : Optimizing the checkout process, building trust, implementing reminder emails, simplifying the checkout process, and implementing a free returns policy can all help you recover abandoned carts.
