Setting up an eCommerce platform, marketing your presence, and staying a step ahead of the competition with deals and offers in itself is a task. Imagine you have done all this, attracting visitors but the revenue chart doesn’t look so promising. Something doesn’t add up.
What you are experiencing right now is called cart abandonment. This is an issue that plagues every eCommerce store owner, and the faster you take the necessary steps to prevent abandoned carts is necessary to make sure that your eCommerce business thrives and doesn’t crumble.
We will discuss how to prevent and recover abandoned carts in WooCommerce, and the reasons why people abandoned carts in the first place. Everything we are about to discuss will also benefit you even if your eCommerce is built outside of WordPress.
What Is Cart Abandonment and How Serious Is It?
A customer visits your online store, adds one or more products, and leaves without completing the checkout process. The items in the cart will stay there for a really long time. The chances of such abandoned carts bringing you revenue are very slim.
Cart abandonment in WooCommerce is an indication that something is wrong and it is affecting the visitors’ experience. You have already solved one piece of the puzzle, which is attracting customers. Now, it’s time to solve the other half, trying to solve the reasons behind the cart abandonment.
Now, how serious is this issue? If you want to generate your targeted revenue, sustain your business and grow, then solving cart abandonment is a must. If not what you will be having is more abandoned carts than sales.
Top Reasons Behind Cart Abandonment in Woocommerce
Now that you have finally decided to tackle this issue and increase your revenue, it’s time we take a look at the most common reasons why visitors abandon carts.
1. Hidden Fees
If your Woocommerce store shows one rate on the product page and a different one on the checkout page, visitors will leave your website in the blink of an eye. Hidden costs such as packaging, shipping rates, and other charges are huge factors in increasing cart abandonment rates. The rate that you show on the product page is what made the visitors add the product to the cart because they were happy with that pricing.
But if you surprise them with the hidden charges, then the conversion rate of a successful purchase would be close to zero.
2. Tedious Checkout Process
A long and complicated checkout process is another recipe for cart abandonment in WooCommerce. If your eCommerce store has a complicated checkout process now would be the time to shorten it.
One biggest advantage of eCommerce shopping is the ability to skip the long queue we experience in offline stores. But with a long checkout process, you are giving the visitors a similar experience. The longer the checkout process, the more visitors you lose. Make the checkout process as short as possible.
Check this plugin Location Picker at Checkout for WooCommerce to add a delivery location picker in WooCommerce checkout
3. Issues Related to Payment
Now, even if the visitors get past the two points mentioned above, the payment element is crucial that determines the cart abandonment rates. There are two factors that can be a huge letdown when it comes to payment:
- The security concerns
- The payment options
Security concerns relating to payment are a big issue. Is your payment gateway secured? No customer will ever be willing to take up the risk of entering their payment credentials on an unsecured payment gateway.
Assuring the customers that the payment gateway is secure is always a must. This assurance will help in allowing the customers to move forward with the transaction.
Another huge factor would be limiting the payment methods. You cannot expect the customers to have the payment method that you have incorporated on your eCommerce site. Therefore it is essential to have all the leading payment option facilities on your site.
4. Unoptimized WooCommerce Website
A website that is slow, hard to navigate or one that crashes often will only see abandoned carts and nothing else. Make sure that the website is user-friendly, with everything arranged properly, and easy for the site visitors to find what they are searching for. Also, ensure the site is well optimized to load up pages without many delays.
The site speed, navigation, and optimization all these factors have to work hand in hand to drive up sales and reduce the cart abandonment rates.
Also read: 13 Ways to Speed Up Your WooCommerce Store
5. Mandatory Account Creation
Some customers prefer to shop without creating an account. There could many reasons for this; they may not be interested in the marketing emails, and surveys that get filled in their inbox. It could also be having the option to shop as a guest shortens the checkout process by eliminating the need to go over the multiple steps of account creation.
As a WooCommerce site owner, allowing the visitors to shop as guests, without creating an account is only going to be beneficial for your business. Our goal is to drive up sales and revenues, not account creation.
6. Return and Refund Policy
After checking the price, the next thing customers search for is the return and refund policy.
The thoughts that go through the mind of the customers during the buying phase are:
“ What if I receive a damaged product?”
“ What will I do if the product I received doesn’t match the one shown on the website?”
“ Will I be able to return the product if it doesn’t meet my expectations or stops working?”
“How long is the return period?”
“ Do they support only returns or can I apply for a refund?”
These are some of the thoughts that can play a role in deciding whether the visitors would add the products to the cart in the first place. Having a strong return and refund policy and making it clear is essential when it comes to running an eCommerce store.
The way how the return and refund can be initiated is also important. Will the user be able to apply for returns and refunds through the click of a button or do they have to call customer service multiple times? Conveying everything to the customers and being crystal clear about it is necessary.
The Top Ways to Prevent Cart Abandonments in Woocommerce
The points we are about to discuss will be useful to WooCommerce site owners and other eCommerce website owners running on different platforms.
1. Enable Guest Shopping
Enabling guest shopping in WooCommerce is easy and is an excellent way to reduce cart abandonments. All you have to do is head over to Accounts and Privacy and enable the option.
As we have discussed, enabling the guest option opens doors to more customers who prefer a simple checkout process without going through the hassle of account creation.
2. Enable All Possible Payment Options
Enabling multiple payment options in WooCommerce is a simple task. The more payment options we have the more customers we can tap into. Not all customers use a debit or credit card, some still prefer cash on delivery. So enabling all the viable options is a necessity to increase sales and reduce cart abandonments.
To enable multiple payment options, head to the Payments tab in WooCommerce settings and enable the required ones.
You can also add the Stripe plugin for WooCommerce to bring in support for more payment options.
As we have discussed, assure the users that the payment gateway is secured and follows the safest encryption protocols.
3. Simplify the Checkout Process
A long and tiring checkout process, moving from one screen to the next, filling one form after another leads to a higher risk of abandoned carts. As a store owner, you want to minimize this time frame. There should only be a maximum of two screens during the checkout process.
One screen to show the items in the cart:
The next screen should be where they get to review their address if they are a signed- user or enter the details if they are shopping as a guest. Then all they have to do is choose the payment method and palace the order.
Another important point that you have to keep in mind is the ability to enable users to convert the currency to their local one. This feature would help you to reach even more customers around the globe. There are a lot of multi-currency plugins for WooCommerce that bring this functionality without many complications.
4. Transparent Pricing
Be clear with how much the customer has to pay, way before they reach the checkout page. Once a customer sees that there have been additional charges such as shipping displayed on the cart page, then there is a good 90% chance that they would leave without buying the product.
So, display the shipping charges and any other additional charges on the product page itself. Displaying shipping charges on WooCoomerce is not as tough as you imagined it to be. Install the “Product page shipping calculator for WooCommerce” plugin and activate it.
After you have enabled the plugin, the shipping charges will automatically be shown on the products pages:
5. Optimize the Woocommerce Website
By optimization, we mean both the ease of use and the site loading speed. Focus on both the desktop as well as mobile users. Not all users shop from a PC, so having a website that is optimized for all platforms. If you are an eCommerce store owner who has a mobile app, then making sure the app works perfectly without any glitches or compromises is of utmost importance.
Having a well-optimized WooCommerce website will be a deciding factor when it comes to user experience. The lesser the page loading times, the greater the user engagement you can expect.
Also read: How to Add Custom CSS to WordPress Easily
6. Exit Intent Popups
Sometimes all a customer needs is a final push, a sort of motivation. This can be achieved by implementing exit intent popups. Basically exit intent works based on an algorithm that tracks the user’s mouse movement. Once it detects that the visitor is about to leave the page, a pop-up will be shown.
You can customize the popup with deals, offers, limited-time valid coupons, or anything that has a chance of making the users complete the checkout process or add more products, or buy an entirely new product.
7. Abandoned Cart Alerts
What if the visitor’s checkout process was interrupted by something else? Like a phone call or an important meeting. The intention to buy the product may be there, but some other things popped up and the user entirely forgot about it.
You could send them a polite reminder like.” Hello Customer, you have items in the cart waiting to be delivered to your doorstep.” You could do this with the help of a plugin WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Recovery or Abandoned Cart Lite for WooCommerce. For now, we have selected the former.
This plugin captures the email address of the visitors and sends them an email depending on the sequence we have set.
Always keep in mind never to be too intrusive. Because if you do, this can backfire. As the users will only find it annoying if you keep on sending them email alerts about abandonment carts every now and then.
Wrapping Up
We have discussed the main reasons that lead to cart abandonments in WooCommerce and also the solutions to minimizing the abandoned cart rates. All the above-mentioned points can be applicable to WooCommerce as well as other eCommerce platforms as well.
Some Frequently Asked Questions About Cart Abandonment
How do I reduce abandoned carts in WooComerce?
Reducing cart abandonments is not a one-step process. We have listed the top ways to reduce the cart abandonments like optimizing the website, enabling guest shopping, exit intent pop-ups, website optimization, and more.
What is cart abandonment?
Cart abandonment is where the users add products to the shopping cart, but do not complete the checkout process. Hence results in no sales and revenue.
Why does cart abandonment happen?
There can be multiple reasons why users abandon the cart. It could be due to a change in the price due to additional charges, a long checkout process, no guest shopping, and so on.