Reducing cart abandonment in online sales

It is in your interest to ensure your potential customers complete the transaction, because more than two-thirds of consumers who abandon an online shopping cart due to checkout friction end up buying from a different merchant, or not buying at all. ⁴

Here are five simple steps you can take to reduce cart abandonment.

1. Clearly show the payment methods you accept.

Almost one in five (18.75%) shoppers abandoned their carts when their preferred payment method was not available. ⁵

2. Don’t force customers to create an account.

Removing account creation speeds up the checkout process and makes it easier for customers to complete the transaction:

• 37% abandoned their cart because they were required to create an account. ⁶
• 19% abandoned their cart as a result of forgetting a password they had set previously.⁷

3. Remove unnecessary steps in your checkout journey.

More than a quarter (28%) abandoned their carts because the checkout process was too long or complicated.⁸ Two-to-five steps are considered best.

Introduce simplicity and ease your customers’ experience:

• Offer guest checkout for new visitors.
• Let shoppers use social med­snia sign-ins.
• Use address search from partial address entry.
• Focus on the mobile user experience process.

Streamline the payments page:

• Display local currency for cross-border shoppers.
• Set length of the card number based on the card type.
• Confirm validity of the card number before progressing to help catch typing mistakes.

4. Use the potential of autofill.

Reduce the time customers spend completing checkout forms:

• Submissions with autofill enabled enjoy a 25% increase in completions.⁹
• Autofill leads to a 30% reduction in the time it takes to complete a form.¹⁰

5. Accept all the ways your customers want to pay.

Satisfy the needs of your local base and potential international customers. Almost half (48%) of cross-border shoppers in a study said they abandoned purchases when their preferred payment method was not offered.¹¹

If online retail, as a whole, used just some of these strategies, customer conversions would rise by more than a third (35%).¹²

^{Content accredited to Discover® Global Network}

^{Sources:
1 & * Statista, October 2020. E-Commerce worldwide – Statistics & facts.
2 & ** Statista, October 2020. E-Commerce worldwide – Statistics & facts.
3 & *** 451 Research, 2020. Covid-19 Update: 2020 Trends in Customer Experience & Commerce.
4 SaleCycle, March 2020. How Coronavirus is Affecting Ecommerce: stats.
5 Baymard Institute, 2020. Current State of Checkout.
6 Barilliance, 2020. Top 10 reasons to shopping cart abandonment.
7 Tech.co, 2020. Ecommerce battle lost passwords.
8 Barilliance, 2020. Top 10 reasons to shopping cart abandonment.
9 UPS, 2019. UPS Pulse of the Online Shopper
10 Baymard Institute, 2019. 40 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics.
11 Baymard Institute, 2019. 40 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics.
12 Baymard Institute, 2019. 40 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics.}