The Blog on Branding

Shopping Cart Abandonment

In this day and age, marketers should not only be using the online option to sell their goods and services, but using this new outlet to the fullest extent. But how many times do you think your customers find themselves muttering to themselves about all of their frustrations concerning the online checkout process? Probably more than you think.

“Customers mutter to themselves about their frustrations.”




It makes your customers angry and just want to forget about the whole thing. Shopping cart abandonment has become an ever-increasing problem for online marketers. This article offers some insight as to how to make the online checkout process a little less painless for all involved based off of the advice of online marketing expert Bryan Eisenberg.

Read on to learn about:

• Less elusive shopping
• Interactive virtual shopping cart
• Pain-free checkout

Less Elusive Shopping

Online shopping might be increasing in popularity, but some people still have their qualms about taking the leap into “cyberspace shopping.”

Call-in or Mail-in Forms
For those that aren’t quite ready to take the leap, having the option of calling-in orders or mail-in order forms should still be intact.

Security
The baby-boomer generation is concerned with security and making sure that things are indeed legitimate. Online marketers should be aware of this market segment, and features to focus on in the online checkout should include assurance of 3rd party reinforcement along with logos to make sure that all of the info entered is indeed safe.

Accessibility
To go along with this, warranties should be made apparent on the site, instead of being hidden somewhere. Everyone always says, “Read the fine print.” While this is true, it shouldn’t take forever to find this information on the website.

If your customers aren’t satisfied with the products and find that they can’t return their new pair of shoes or their new sweater, they’re probably going to be pretty upset. Most people want to know what they are up against when they have to deal with the big, bad exchange/return monster.

“They have to deal with the big, bad exchange/return monster?”

Interactive Virtual Shopping Cart

When customers finally start to go through the stages of the checkout process, there are a lot of things to consider on the designing side of it all.

Thumbnails
A lot of people are visual learners so having a thumbnail picture of all the items in the cart is often a desired feature. This also helps when cross- and up-selling are trying to take place. If there is a picture of what the person is intending to buy, it is going to be a lot easier to show them items that could either complement or supplement the product that they are already intending to purchase.

Recommend a Purchase
If other products are recommended based on what others are buying, this will give the buyer a sense of belonging and being able to identify with a group of similar people (or so they think). Also, along with the picture, a link back to the original product should be included. This gives the consumer the option to go back and look at product details one last time to make sure that this is really what they want.

Pain-free Checkout

Once your customers decide what they really want and don’t want, then it’s time to proceed to putting in all of the information that seems to take close to FOREVER. (Unless of course one has cookies. And I mean, who doesn’t love cookies?) During this process, it is very important to ensure accuracy on both parties’ parts, as well as making the final process relatively pain-free so your customer doesn’t just give up and click that X button on the top of the screen. You can bet it’s going to be tempting for them if your information page is not user-friendly.

“Cookies save your customers’ time.”



From here, they can then go to enter the coupon info or promotion code, which should not only be labeled well, but placed somewhere on the page where it makes logical sense. Marketers need to make their pages user-friendly to increase sales and customer interaction, and more importantly, time spent on the site that might then lead to a sale.

Payment Possibilities
Next comes the payment information. Now in this day in age, most people own credit or debit cards, so this should not be a problem. However, not everyone has these, and seeing as how no one should be left out of this whole cyberspace shopping experience, make different payment options.

Throw in some PayPal, check or money order options if you can swing it. If people feel like they are being catered to, they are probably going to be more likely to order that new coat or boxed DVD collection.

Now that all of the information is in, they’ll click that confirm order button and voila, online purchase complete. This whole thing from start to finish should be relatively pain-free. Otherwise, neither party is going to benefit here. Depending on what shipping method your customer chose, the product will be to them in 1-6 weeks.

This whole process isn’t that painful, but there are 3 major ideas to keep in mind for online marketers in order to keep their site retention rates high among their online shoppers:

1. Have a progress indicator at the top of the screen the whole time the customer is going through the purchasing pages. The customer will know there isn’t much further to go and is more likely to stick with it than just forget about it.
2. Try to have them take an exit survey for those that do actually fall to temptation and cancel their order by clicking that X button at the top of their screen. Find out why they didn’t complete that order. This can only improve services to the customer in the future. Heck, even try to give the survey to the people that actually did complete their orders. Feedback of any kind will help the marketers increase their retention rates online.
3. Make a distinct difference between the cancel order and continue buttons. Too many times, people will accidentally click the cancel button and just give up, because they don’t want to start the whole process over again.

Following these three ideas will make everything else run smoothly.

Clearly, even though online shopping is growing in popularity, there are still some glitches and things that need to be worked on before it lives up to its predicted potential. However, I truly think that it is going to be the way of the future.

The ultimate goal is to completely wipe out consumer frustration and avoid shopping cart abandonment at all costs. I mean, wouldn’t it be great in the future to avoid Black Friday mass mayhem and shop online in your PJ’s with your cup of coffee, and then just head back to bed once you are satisfied? I’ll shop to that.

Kyra Pritchard Want content written for your Brand that shows up #1 on Search Engines and brings you new customers? Contact us.