What's causing cart abandonment at checkout?
You and your team have done the work - attracting visitors to the site, capturing their interest, and convincing them to add products to their cart. But when it’s time to buy, something stops them in their tracks.
It’s the checkout experience - the last and most critical part of the customer’s journey. But this is often where things fall apart. So what exactly is causing cart abandonment at this late stage in the buying journey?
The fickle nature of ecommerce
Let’s take a look at the latest research. According to the
Baymard Institute, 70% of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart. So, just 3 out of 10 customers who fill their shopping carts complete their purchase.
That appears to be a significant amount of potential revenue slipping through the cracks. But as most
ecommerce retailers know, this amount of drop-offs is just a natural result of the way that users shop online. Perhaps they’re browsing, comparing prices, or just holding off till payday. But what about the users who are abandoning their cart due to real challenges at checkout?
Key checkout challenges causing cart abandonment
These are just some of the reasons given by users when explaining the factors that contributed to abandoning a recent purchase.
ADD IMAGE from eBook
19% - didn’t trust the site with their credit card info
Trust signals (or a lack of) play a major part in why a user might abandon their cart at checkout.
19% - had to create an account
Forcing users to create an account before they buy can be a major barrier to completing a purchase.
18% - the checkout process was too long or too complicated
If your customers need to fill out lengthy forms, navigate through too many steps, or are struggling with confusing formatting, they won’t put their time or energy into completing a purchase.
But this is where you can make small changes to your checkout that will have a big impact on your conversion rate.
3 quick fixes for a speedier checkout
If your checkout has too many form fields or is tricky to fill out, there are quick changes you can make, with minimal coding, to speed things up. Here’s how you can recover the 18% of users who will abandon checkout due to it being too long or too complicated.
1. Reduce the time it takes to enter a delivery address
If you’re expecting your customers to manually fill out all of their address details, you’re probably expecting too much. Users are increasingly familiar with fields that automatically suggest data as they type, or inputting minimal information, such as their postcode, so that they can select their address in just a couple of clicks.
By integrating Address Auto-Complete functionality, you significantly reduce the time it takes for a customer to input their delivery address, removing frustration and getting them closer to completing their purchase.
2. Eliminate the possibility of typos or errors
Mistakes happen, especially when we type information manually. If, for example, a customer accidentally adds an incorrect digit to a postcode, this will not only cause operational issues but can have an impact on your customer support team and your brand’s reputation, not to mention lost revenue.
By adding a Postcode Lookup tool to your checkout that pulls data from a reliable source, you can make sure that human error is eliminated. It will pull a list of ready-verified addresses from the customer’s postcode so that they can easily select the correct address and carry on to complete their purchase.
3. Reduce uncertainty around how to format
Don’t leave any room for doubt when it comes to formatting, whether it’s unclear phone number layout or hesitation around spacing in postcodes. If you don’t guide your customers on how to enter their details at checkout, it slows them down and leaves them guessing about the reliability of your brand.
The best thing you can do is take the guesswork out of filling out forms completely. If you add
data verification software to your platform, customers will get instant error feedback. So when an email address is misspelled or a phone number is missing an area code, customers know instantaneously, helping them correct the mistake and move swiftly through checkout. Plus, you can be confident that all the contact information you have is correct.
Want to know more about data validation at checkout?
To help you
understand why your customers are abandoning their carts at checkout and how to address this issue, we’ve created a free guide: The Fast Lane to Sales: Reducing Dropped Checkouts with Data Validation.
It’ll give you practical ideas of how to optimise your checkout using data validation, plus a 14-day plan to help get you started.
