Aban­doned Cart

Every­time a cus­tomer adds prod­ucts to their online shop­ping cart but leaves with­out com­plet­ing the pur­chase, an aban­doned cart is born. This can hap­pen for many rea­sons: unex­pect­ed dis­trac­tions, high ship­ping costs, a com­pli­cat­ed or frus­trat­ing check­out process, or cus­tomers hes­i­tant to pro­vide per­son­al infor­ma­tion such as per­son­al address or cred­it card details.

It doesn’t even nec­es­sar­i­ly mean some­thing went wrong. For exam­ple, B2B com­pa­nies often have com­plex buy­ing process­es that involve mul­ti­ple deci­sion-mak­ers. Some­times, a poten­tial buy­er adds prod­ucts to their cart but does­n’t com­plete the pur­chase. To address this, com­pa­nies can imple­ment remar­ket­ing strate­gies by send­ing tar­get­ed emails or per­son­al­ized fol­low-ups to remind cus­tomers about their aban­doned carts. 

Apart from offer­ing incen­tives for cus­tomers to com­plete their pur­chase, busi­ness­es should also stream­line their check­out process to reduce aban­don­ment rates in the first place. This could involve mak­ing sure all prices are clear­ly dis­played and ensur­ing cus­tomers aren’t asked for unnec­es­sary infor­ma­tion at check­out. Anoth­er way to reduce cus­tomer fric­tion and thus, aban­don­ment rates, is automat­ing pay­ment processes.