When a customer goes to the local big box department store to shop, they rarely abandon their shopping cart unless they have an emergency or some truly distasteful experience that causes them to simply leave.
On the Internet, however, online retailers report figures of in excess of fifty percent shopping cart abandonment. Those incomplete sales add up to a huge loss for online retailers. First, you have spent good money on pay per click ads and website enhancements to get people to your site and entice them to fill up a shopping cart. Then, when there is a precipitous abandonment, you have lost not only the marketing money but also the sale.
If your site attracts 3,000 visitors per month, on average, you achieve a 10% engagement rate (engagement rate is the number of visitors who add something to a shopping cart) and your average sale is $50, you have 300 people who are planning to purchase $50 in merchandise or $15,000 in potential sales. Losing half of that potential drops your revenue to $7,500/month for an annual loss of $90,000 in revenue. For every 5% improvement in abandonment rate, you can add $9,000 to your revenue.
To begin to solve the shopping cart abandonment problem, try to align the virtual experience more closely to the bricks and mortar experience.
Comparison Shopping
The bricks and mortar shopper can pick up and physically compare items within an area. You can not offer that experience but you can provide some features that help people inspect your products carefully such as a zoom option, three dimensional option, display product in all available colors and so on. You can also offer a comparison grid so that your customer can compare different products within your site. Plus, you can offer a cart that remains filled so that your potential customer can return at another time to complete the sale.
No Surprises at Check Out
Just think of how unpopular your store would be if a shopper picked up a $60 blouse, got to the check out register and discovered that there would be clothing tax, a handling fee and a transportation fee that increases the price from $60 to $85. This kind of last minute sticker shock has a very negative effect on online shoppers as well. Solve this problem by calculating all costs associated with the sale at the time the item is placed into the basket.
No Required Registration
Have you ever been to a store that asks you for your zip code or postal or email address during the checkout process? Have you overheard people saying, I am sorry, I do not care to give out that information in order to buy this pair of socks. The same reluctance applies to online shoppers. As soon as the potential customer sees that registration form, they begin to wonder how many unwelcome emails they will receive by filling in the information. You may be able to solve this problem by offering private list sales or special previews. Alternatively, offer your customers the opportunity to shop as a guest to avoid flight.
You have done all of the hard work to get the customer engaged, take these few additional step to complete the sale.
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