Most online retail sites are losing money, and probably at this very moment, because they have abandonment issues. It is a customer experience that most brands are trying desperately to avoid, but shopping cart abandonment is still a real concern for customer engagement marketers.
Shopping cart abandonment happens when online visitors select items for purchase, actually being to checkout, but desert the process before completing the transaction. Higher shopping cart abandonment means a loss of orders and lower conversion rates, which, of course, also means less revenue.
This is a challenge for customer engagement marketers today, which is why Bronto Software and Demandware, two leading designers of commerce and marketing solutions, conducted research to better understand this issue.
The study, “Revenue Rescue: Saving Sales When Shoppers Stray,” looked at 100 major U.S. retailers to discover why some shoppers abandon online carts, what strategies can recover potential lost revenue, and how to build long-term customer loyalty.
Surprisingly, the study found that a full 40% of online shoppers continue leave items in a shopping carts on a regular basis. And this is prompting many brands to rethink the way carts are structured, how the checkout process flows and what can be done to further engage these neglectful shoppers.
One successful technique, the study found, was to send customized and highly relevant reminders and alerts to specific customers.
“The Revenue Rescue research results revealed that 41% of retailers send cart reminders, representing a three-fold increase since 2013,” said Jim Davidson, head of research at Bronto Software. “Cart reminder emails give commerce marketers the opportunity to connect with a shopper and provide a helpful customer-centric experience.”
Another technique adopted by some of the more successful brands was to simplify the entire checkout process.
Any online customer experience that was too complicated was shown to increase abandonment. And it’s a transgression that many retailers continue to make.
This was evidenced by study results demonstrating that most customers were forced to, on average, navigate through 5.5 web pages to complete an order. A 10% of all retailers also required an additional registration as well.
These factors are actually making the entire online customer experience more complex, and it is something that retailers need to strongly reconsider going forward.
“There is still room for retailers to improve the way the shopping cart looks, feels and operates to facilitate the shopper’s desire for a seamless online and in-store experience – and reduce true abandonment,” Davidson concluded.