What Business Owners Need to know so That Shoppers Make a Successful Transaction

Think of this scenario --someone goes into a supermarket buy groceries. They fill their shopping cart with milk and eggs and everything they need for the week. They start heading for a checkout line, but that moment, their phone rings.

They answer the call, get distracted for a few minutes and just wander out of the store and drive away from the supermarket leaving the full cart behind. Have you ever seen something like this? Probably not. But the situation with abandoned carts in online stores is no different. According to a report, carts are abandoned about 67 percent of the time, on average. This number is too serious to just ignore.

Should you try to coax wayward shoppers back to their cart to finish their purchase? Or maybe focus on attracting new, more confident customers? To make the right decision, think of two metrics: retention rate and lifetime value. For an online store, it’s extremely important to do what you can to get people to finish their transactions.

Master the technical side

1.     Make sure your online store is fast. At every step, nothing should lag or freeze. Every second of the delay during the loading of a page increases the probability of purchase abandonment by 7 percent.

2.     Make sure your website has a convenient, mobile responsive design. Think about customers that will visit your site on smartphones. Perhaps, it will look like this:

It is unlikely that any mobile user will stay on such website for a long time. 

3.     Ensure the safety of a purchase. By safety, I mean not only an SSL certificate but also the protection of a site by a reliable antivirus. A customer should be sure that a purchase won’t lead to any issues.

4.     Make your cart easily editable. What if a customer suddenly decides to buy several units of a product? Or add another item? You mustn’t refuse them in such cases. Editing a cart should be as easy as adding goods to it.

5.     Use a cart that will remember its content. If your customer has put products into the cart, and then switched to another website, their order should remain active. It well may be that in a few minutes the customer will return and complete the purchase.

6.     Eliminate hyperlinks in a cart. Nothing should distract your customer from making a purchase. Hyperlinks may improve interlinking on your website, but they will definitely have an adverse effect on sales. You don’t want that, do you?

7.     Get rid of pop-ups in an order placement mode. Remember that any distractions can be harmful. If a visitor is already ready to buy and has opened a cart, is it worth offering them another product? There is no guarantee that he or she won’t start doubting and go to seek the advice of their other half (and then a phone will ring, and so on). Generally, cross-marketing can be useful, but everything should be used in moderation.

8.     Simplify the process. The fewer steps, the more chances to achieve the goal. Keep in mind 27 percent of buyers that refuse from a purchase because of a too complex ordering process.

Other best practices for online sales

1.     Offer a money back guarantee. Anything can happen. Your readiness to “forgive and forget” will be highly appreciated by a buyer. But before you promise a refund, think it through and make sure the specifics are easy to find on your website. Customers are more likely to complete a purchase when they know your return policy.

2.     Use visuals in your shopping cart. Instead of just showing a product listing, include an image of the item as well.

3.     Add the most recent review of a chosen product to an order placement page. Even if a customer is already ready to buy a product, they will be pleased to know that someone else is left satisfied with the same purchase.

4.     Integrate a purchase progress indicator. This is rather an optional, perfectionist-oriented feature. Similar to a progress bar when you’re filling out a survey—it might compel people who really don’t like to leave things undone. An incomplete purchase? Only in a nightmare!

5.     Offer a discount to customers that have left a cart. Send an offer with a discount or a free shipment option to their email. Such a gift can convince a buyer that doubts. 54 percent of buyers will finish a purchase if they are offered a discount while placing an order! Remember to specify how long the discount will be valid.

Try to evaluate your online store as if you were a buyer. When in doubt, ask for help from a professional digital marketer with experience helping people optimize their websites for sales.