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Why are so many potential customers abandoning their carts on your online store before completing their purchase?

Abandoned carts are one of the most frustrating (and heartbreaking) things about being an eCommerce business. You have invested time and money into driving targeted traffic to your online store, only to result in visitors abandoning their shopping cart at the last stage before purchase. The person abandoning their cart is clearly interested in what you are selling, but something comes up that stops them from purchasing.

Here are 5 common reasons for shopping cart abandonment

Eliminating or improving these should help you convert more visitors into customers and get more sales for your online store.

1. Requiring customers to create an account before checking out (just don’ t do it – give them the choice).

2. Unexpected (and high) shipping costs. Be transparent and make it easy for customers to locate your shipping charges and policy. Always try to offer free shipping, even if it’s on minimum order value (for example, free shipping over X amount).

3. A long and confusing checkout process. Keep the checkout as simple, streamlined and distraction-free as possible. This is why I love Shopify’s checkout system – it’s designed for conversion optimisation.

4. Finding a better price, elsewhere. Unfortunately, this is a hard one to eliminate. It’s often just not feasible to lower your prices, but do always remain aware of competitors’ pricing.

5. Lagging, slow or dysfunctional website during checkout. Another reason I love Shopify is that their advanced online store hosting infrastructure ensures online stores function fast at all times, even on days like Black Friday.

How to re-engage visitors who have abandoned their carts

Even if you improve on all the above five points, it’s still likely visitors will abandon their carts. Unfortunately you can’t get inside their heads to find out why. The next best option is abandoned cart reminder emailers.

Abandoned car emailers are sent a few hours after the visitor left your online store. They are a great way to persuade customers to return to their potential purchases and in turn, help you increase sales. Abandoned cart reminder emails be set up through Shopify, by using a plugin if your store is built in WordPress or via an email marketing tool such as MailerLite (which syncs with both Shopify and WordPress). 

Remember to view these abandoned carts as prospective customers, not lost sales, so act fast and act smart.

Further reading

How to set up automated abandoned cart reminder emailers and follow up emailers with discount codes in MailerLite – https://www.mailerlite.com/video-tutorials/abandoned-cart-emails

Creative abandoned cart recovery email strategies your competitors aren’t using – https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/abandoned-cart-emails/

Hi - I'm Megan Hodson

I’m a Shopify + WordPress web designer with 16+ years communications, marketing and digital design experience, including working in eCommerce since 2010.

Our studio collaborates with brave-hearted small businesses around the world, helping them create beautifully-functional websites that convert.

We specialise in:

Shopify Stores: We help you plan and design stunning, user-friendly online shops that are easy to manage and scale alongside your business. Learn more.

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