You'll be surprised to know that close to 98% of customers will come to your online retail platform but will leave without making a purchase. Shopping cart abandonment remains a crucial metric for online stores and profoundly impacts your gross online sales.
With the automated tools like Amazon Seller inventory management and AI capabilities available today, there are many ways to reduce shopping cart abandonment. Here are the top five ways you can try for your online store.
1. Use Whatsapp or Links for Cart Recovery:
Most e-commerce brands are still getting used to WhatsApp being a key channel for engaging customers in real-time. WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion users worldwide, which possibly includes a large part of your audience. Brands often use real-time messenger platforms like WhatsApp to offer order updates, generate personalized offers and nudge messages to complete transactions.
With AI-based automation tools and Machine Learning-enabled chatbots, recovering abandoned carts has become much more manageable. You can send automated messages for cart recovery to customers who have added products to their carts on your online store but haven't finished their purchase. Customers receive a personalized text containing a link. This link takes the potential customer directly to the checkout page, retaining their added products and the pricing when adding to the cart.
This simple step has allowed e-commerce platforms to recover over 60% of sales they would have possibly lost.
2. Use the Power of Text Messages:
Despite today's digital-first communication channels, SMS and texts are still relevant platforms for young and older audiences. It allows online stores to engage customers offline, with a 96% open rate. You can use this platform for personalized offers, cart recovery, and customer acquisition.
3. Ensure a Secure Checkout Experience:
As enterprises' digital transformation journeys continue, customers are increasingly aware of the online security measures they should look for and the level of protection they should expect from online stores.
Primarily, customers abandon their shopping carts because they do not find the platform's transaction gateway secure. To give customers reason to trust your online platform and provide a secure checkout experience, you should ensure:
● Trustworthy security labels like payment gateways, SSL certifications, antivirus labels, etc
● Transparent display of each step of the transaction
● Use product thumbnails every step of the way. Make sure you update the product details in the Amazon Seller Inventory Management tool.
4. Allow Multiple Payment Options:
One of the worst reasons to lose out on sales is not offering a particular payment method. All your customers use multiple payment methods, at least two, such as credit and debit cards, digital wallets, UPI, and cryptocurrency in some cases.
5. Add Guest Checkout as an Option:
All websites ask customers to create a new ID, login, or signup. Sometimes when customers are in a hurry, they want to complete purchases without filling out too much personal information. Adding a guest checkout option on your portal can help you recover about 14% of lost sales.
Neglecting cart abandonment in today's market is not an option because it can quickly make or break online businesses. As customer behaviors evolve, make sure you keep up with their changing demands and experience expectations.