Only three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and cart abandonment rate being around the 70% range.
Funny paraphrases aside, brand owners and marketers have cart abandonment issues ever since online shopping became a thing.
And that wouldn’t be that big of a problem—If merchants and marketers managed to put strategies in place that would decrease this rate over time. And you bet they did.
But did it work? You have one guess.
🖱️📈 Clicking on each individual chart will take you to its interactive looker studio board.
The Great Flat Curve: Online Cart Abandonment Until 2023
What happened over the years: Technical and fulfilment improvements, UX enchantments, automation.
What should’ve happened as a result: Online merchants and marketers reducing cart abandonment.
However, one look at the cart abandonment rate in the past decade tells a different story:
A few percentages up or down, but the rate remains relatively flat at around 70%.
Which could mean that no matter what you do—and no matter how many improvements there are—people will just leave their carts at the same rate, for one reason or another.
And you can’t really rely on external force to help you deal with this issue.
🛒Roughly $18B is left in shopping carts every year. (Source: dynamic yield)
Zooming In: Cart Abandonment Over a Single Year
Cart abandonment rate seems to work like clockwork year over year.
But there must be some fluctuations, right? There are, but you’ll have to ditch the annuality—and turn to seasonality:
As you see, the lowest abandoned cart rate occurs late October to early November.
To nobody’s surprise, it’s the biggest shopping period of the year—and when shoppers are determined to actually complete their purchase.
On the other hand Q1—also known as post-holiday period in non-business circles—is when shoppers are likely to keep their money in their wallets.
During this time, you’ll likely need to be more convincing, or streamline your customers’ shopping experience. Let’s first see what you can do?
Why Do Shoppers Abandon Their Carts?
An extensive survey from Baymard reported the following results:
It seems like additional fees put off half of the shoppers.
And when “hidden” later in the checkout process, they can frustrate shoppers. A lot.
You’re better off setting clear expectations upfront—and not making your customers watch their total amount grow unexpectedly.
Similarly, adding additional steps during the checkout process has the same effect. Especially forcing shoppers to create accounts, or having unnecessary touchpoints.
Return policies—which we touched last week—play a role, as is lack of payment methods.
So overall, there are tangible reasons you can consider when trying to reduce cart abandonment.
Avoiding the Inevitable? Reducing Cart Abandonment
You’ll probably find tons of articles online on how to do this.
But it all boils down to four things:
Be transparent: Don’t add any hidden fees. If they are inevitable, notify your customers before the checkout phase.
Provide seamless checkout experience: Most users leave mid-shopping when they see a dragged-out checkout process. And who can blame them? Reducing shopping to one-two touchpoints is key.
Offer a nice return policy: It can be at your detriment, but stats show that free returns can up your sales rate.
Be more convincing during off-season: During Q1—meaning now and probably all the way to Q4—you’ll have to be more creative with your campaigns, more generous with your offers, and make sure that you’ve implemented all the above.
Hopefully next year we’ll see abandoned cart rates dropping by at least 2-3%.
…But we wouldn’t bet on it.
Sources
The report sourced data from the following:
