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19 Effective Ways To Decrease Cart Abandonment And Boost Sales

Learn 19 proven strategies to decrease cart abandonment and boost sales, keeping more customers through checkout.

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19 Effective Ways To Decrease Cart Abandonment And Boost Sales
Title
19 Effective Ways To Decrease Cart Abandonment And Boost Sales
Date
Jan 8, 2025
Description
Learn 19 proven strategies to decrease cart abandonment and boost sales, keeping more customers through checkout.
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Current Column
Person
Writer
You've put a lot of energy into creating your online store. You’ve optimized your product pages, increased traffic to your website, and even started making sales. Then, suddenly, a customer adds a product to their cart and disappears. Cart abandonment is one of the most frustrating challenges for online stores.
Not only can it feel personal — like you’ve done something wrong to scare away a potential customer — cart abandonment is also widespread, with an average rate of 69.57%. This guide will explore practical ways to decrease cart abandonment and boost sales, starting with social proof pop-ups.
One of the first things you can do to improve sales and decrease cart abandonment is to leverage Testimonial software. This tool helps you collect, organize, and display customer reviews, ratings, and photos on your eCommerce store.

What Is Cart Abandonment?

Decrease Cart Abandonment
Decrease Cart Abandonment
When a potential customer starts a checkout process for an online order but drops out of the process before completing the purchase, that’s cart abandonment.  Any item that enters the shopping cart but never makes it through the transaction is considered “abandoned” by the shopper.  You can think of cart abandonment as a digital version of someone coming into a store, picking up some items, and then leaving before they make a purchase. The real-world analogy can help illustrate that cart abandonment occurs after a customer has signaled intent to buy. It’s an essential part of online shopping that retailers pay careful attention to.

Why Is Cart Abandonment Rate Important?

The cart abandonment rate is an essential metric for ecommerce sites to track. A high abandonment rate could signal a poor user experience or a broken sales funnel. Reducing shopping cart abandonment leads directly to more sales and revenue, so optimizing the checkout flow is a core area of focus for many online retailers.

How Is Cart Abandonment Rate Calculated?

The shopping cart abandonment rate for any given online store can be calculated with this formula: Cart abandonment = 1 – (Total number of shoppers who complete transactions / Total number of shoppers who add items to cart)

Cart Abandonment Statistics You Should Know

Any ecommerce merchant will experience cart abandonment as a significant pain point — but it’s still easy to underestimate how much of a real impact it can have:
  • $4.6 trillion in ecommerce sales are lost to cart abandonment each year.
  • Clothes are the most commonly abandoned product category, followed by tech and housewares.
  • 41% of shoppers have abandoned a transaction during checkout in the past year, compared to 24% who have walked away from a purchase in a physical store.
  • But it’s not all gloom and doom regarding cart abandonment. There’s room — and actionable advice — for improvement.
  • $260 billion in ecommerce sales is recoverable through checkout optimization.
  • 35.26% of ecommerce stores see an increase in conversion rate through better checkout design.
  • The average site has 39 potential areas for checkout improvements.

What Is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate?

Across industries, the average cart abandonment rate is 75.6%. Consider that 100 customers enter your store, fill their shopping carts, and bring their full carts to the cash register. Now, consider 76 of those 100 customers leaving your store — and their full carts — behind without purchasing. This may sound far-fetched, but in ecommerce, this happens every day. That’s the ugly truth about shopping cart abandonment. And it’s even uglier when you consider that mobile drives 60% of ecommerce traffic but has an above-average abandonment rate of 81%.

What Are The Reasons Behind A High Cart Abandonment Rate?

Decrease Cart Abandonment
Decrease Cart Abandonment

1. High Shipping Costs: The Deal-Breaker for Online Shoppers

Online shoppers have high expectations for shipping costs. A Forrester study shows that 44% of online shoppers abandon their carts because of shipping and handling costs. Customers expect both fast and affordable shipping at the click of a button. Not providing this will hurt your conversion rates and lead to lost sales.

2. No Guest Checkout Option: The Hassle of Account Creation

When an online store requires customers to create an account or log in before completing their purchase, many online shoppers will abandon the site and their cart. Account creation is a hassle that harms the customer experience and holds up eCommerce sales.

3. Delivery Options Are Too Slow: Customers Want Their Orders Fast

How long delivery will take is a deciding factor for many shoppers. If they find out they'll have to wait weeks for their order, they'll probably abandon their carts. Consider offering expedited shipping as an option.

4. Reluctance to Share Credit Card Information: Security Issues Are a Big Deal

Concerns about the legitimacy of an online store can also lead to abandoned carts. Common issues include security, privacy, and order fulfillment, which can erode trust and make it unlikely that a shopper will be willing to put in their credit card information.

5. Complicated Checkout Processes: Make it Easy

A long or confusing checkout process will deter customers from completing their purchases immediately. Frustrated shoppers will abandon the checkout page without a second thought.

6. Visitors Struggle to Locate the Order's Total Cost: Confusion Kills Conversions

Sometimes, finding the total cost of an order on the checkout page is challenging. If this happens, customers leave due to confusion about how much they'll be charged for their order.

7. Website Errors: Bugs Drive Shoppers Away

Ecommerce sites with many errors will also have a high shopping cart abandonment rate. Customers will get impatient and simply leave the site.

8. Inadequate Return Policies: Shoppers Fear Getting Stuck with Bad Products

Customers care a lot about return policies, especially when making their first purchase from an ecommerce store. They don't want to get stuck with a product that they don't like. So, if a return policy is too restrictive, it can lead to high shopping cart abandonment rates.

9. Too Few Payment Options: Customers Want Flexibility

Your checkout process should allow for many different payment methods, including Paypal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet—online wallets like these help customers shop online without needing to use their credit card details.

10. Declined Credit Cards: A Frustrating Experience for Customers

If a customer's card is declined, this will stop them from purchasing. Unfortunately, this is not something you can prevent.

19 Effective Ways To Decrease Cart Abandonment And Boost Sales

Decrease Cart Abandonment
Decrease Cart Abandonment

1. Improve Your Website Experience

A smooth website experience is essential to reducing abandoned carts. Here’s how to improve the website and checkout experience to reduce cart abandonment: Use subscriber data to suggest relevant products via email and SMS based on browsing history or past purchases. Collect and display customer reviews and testimonials to build trust and credibility. Optimize your website and app for fast load times and mobile responsiveness. Simplify your checkout process, reduce form fields, and offer guest checkout. Offer competitive and transparent prices with no hidden costs.

2. Use Exit-Intent Pop-Ups to Encourage a Complete Purchase

Exit-intent pop-ups trigger when shoppers are about to leave your site without completing their purchase. They can offer a last-minute incentive, such as free shipping or a discount code, to encourage shoppers to stay and complete the checkout process. When using exit-intent pop-ups, Use a clear and attention-grabbing headline. Keep the pop-up short and straightforward. Provide clear and easy-to-follow instructions on how to redeem the offer. Offer a time-sensitive incentive to create urgency. Make the pop-up easy to close.

3. Show All Payment Options

With all the various payment options available, you need to make it easy for your customers to see which they can use in your store. This is an essential step in making your checkout process smoother.

4. Use Product Recommendations

Another tactic for reducing your cart abandonment rate is recommending other products as part of your checkout process. This is an excellent opportunity to cross-sell and raise your average order value. This means you can fill any unmet needs and ensure your customers don’t abandon their carts.

5. Simplify Returns

Make it clear to customers that your return process is simple and hassle-free. Many customers abandon their carts because they aren’t satisfied with the return policy and aren’t confident they will want to keep the product. Adding a disclaimer on the checkout page or on your product pages that clearly outlines your return policy and process can give customers peace of mind that they can go through with the purchase and have a simple return process if the product doesn’t fit their needs.

6. Don’t Force Account Creation at Checkout

Ensure you offer customers the option to checkout as a “guest” and avoid forcing them to create an account. There are many other ways to encourage account creation and collect valuable customer data, but pushing this when preparing to purchase can turn customers off. If they have a painless checkout, they are likely to return, and you will have more opportunities to encourage them to make an official account and collect valuable data from them for future interactions.

7. Use a Rewards Program

Most eCommerce brands have rewards or loyalty programs in place. If you aren’t in the position to give out discounts for abandoned carts, consider enticing customers to return with “double the points.” Depending on how your loyalty program is set up, you can use it to leverage customers to return and complete a purchase. Add this offer to your abandoned cart reminder messages and include a link that leads them back to their cart.

8. Enable a Web Chatbot for FAQs

If a customer has a question or concern right before checking out, don’t force them into an egg hunt on Google or your website to find the answers. By enabling a web chatbot, you can chat with your customers on the checkout page and answer any FAQs they might have. This way, you can offer customers fast, 24/7, and convenient support and lower the chance of them abandoning their cart with a friendly web chatbot.

9. Use Social Proof

Sometimes, shoppers need a little push from the actions of other shoppers to get to the checkout and complete a purchase. Add a “best-seller” or “selling fast” tag to your most popular items. Or try adding a tag that tells customers how many people have this item in their cart or how many have been sold in the last 24 hours. This adds a sense of urgency and gives customers more incentive to complete a purchase if the item is popular among other shoppers.

10. Send a Discount

If you have sent your reminder message and even offered a loyalty reward incentive, and the customer still hasn’t returned to their cart, try the good old discount trick. Shoppers love a deal, and offering a small discount of 5 or 10% off their purchase can be the final push they need to complete the sale. Send special deals to entice customers to return to their online carts.

11. Use Social Media to Re-Target Customers

If a shopper has abandoned their cart and hasn’t engaged with your messages to return to complete the purchase, try using the data you have on that customer to retarget them in the future with those items. First-party data is incredibly valuable, and it can help you understand what your customers are interested in and how you should target them. Launch targeted campaigns on social media platforms like Instagram featuring items that customers have abandoned in the past.

12. Reduce Additional Costs

Let’s be honest: how many times have you abandoned your cart when you saw the shipping cost added? Customers will spend $75 on a product but shy away from an additional $10 shipping charge. Offer different shipping options, from regular (free for shoppers) to express, where a fee is applied. You can even offer free shipping if the customer spends X on their purchase. This incentive can go a long way in helping ensure that carts are abandoned at checkout.

13. Create a Favorites List

You may not be able to keep items in your customers’ carts, but you can transfer those items to a “favorites” list depending on how your eCommerce store is set up. This makes it much more convenient for shoppers to remember what products they wanted before they abandoned their carts.

14. Send Abandoned Cart Reminders

Sending reminders could be one of the more effective ways to encourage shoppers to return to your eCommerce store. Thanks to conversational experiences adopted by brands over the last few years, customers are growing accustomed to getting messages from brands on different channels like SMS, WhatsApp, Email, and RCS. Traditionally, SMS and Email were very popular for cart abandonment reminders. In Emails, customers can view the items they have left behind, and SMS can provide links that take shoppers right back to your online store.

15. Create a Sense of Urgency

Limited-time discount codes are a great way to increase the sense of urgency and encourage users to buy now rather than later. However, you need to make sure that your countdown is actual. If you mislead customers about the time-limited nature of your offer, they’ll figure it out and lose interest. Popups are a great place to show a coupon code that has a countdown timer associated with it.

16. Personalize Offers Based on Cart Value

You can personalize each coupon code based on the user's value in their cart. Every time customers add more to their cart, their discount increases. This is a great way to give customers the discounts they love without negatively affecting your revenue.

17. Conduct A/B Testing

A/B testing is a powerful tool for optimizing your website and reducing your cart abandonment rate. It creates two web page versions based on what you want to test. The next step is to split your web traffic amongst the versions and monitor the performance of each version to see which one falls in line with your goals. When running A/B tests, altering only one variable at a time is essential. This way, you can accurately determine the changes that lead to increased or decreased outcomes and optimize the customer journey.

18. Offer Filters to Help Customers Find the Right Product

The problem that most e-commerce retailers face is that they have so many products but not as many filters. This makes it difficult for shoppers to be sure that the product they are looking at is correct, so they jump from one to another. People always try to find the most value at the lowest price possible.

19. Collect Customer Feedback about Pain Points

Customer feedback is always valuable for identifying underlying issues that might lead to cart abandonment. We’ve already mentioned how tools like Google’s Advanced E-commerce Analytics can help businesses visualize common customer dropoff points. But quantitative data can only go so far.
Qualitative data collection from post-purchase surveys can Outline a user’s feelings about the checkout process. Explore UX/UI upgrades. Recommend future products. Highlight any problems during the checkout process. The insights gained during these surveys can help businesses identify areas for improvement. If you notice high attrition levels after a specific step, these surveys will provide further insight into why.

Cart Abandonment Recovery Strategies And Tips

Decrease Cart Abandonment
Decrease Cart Abandonment

Use Retargeting Ads to Win Back Lost Sales

Even with strategies to reduce cart abandonment, many shoppers will still leave your site without buying anything. Instead of seeing those abandoned carts as lost sales, treat them as promising leads. Retargeting ads use cookies to track shoppers who left items in their cart and show them personalized ads on social media or other websites they visit. These ads are reminders and can entice shoppers to return and complete their purchases.

To make your retargeting ads effective

  • Segment your target audience based on the products left in the cart.
  • Use eye-catching visuals and compelling copy to grab attention.

Build Cart Abandonment Flows to Recover Lost Sales

While you can’t avoid abandoned carts altogether, you can automate cart abandonment emails to ensure shoppers return and complete the purchase. You can personalize these emails by automatically including the customer’s name, the items they left behind, and a strong call to action. While unnecessary, you can even set up dynamic discount codes based on item value to incentivize people to complete their purchases, especially if they’re expensive.

To make your cart abandonment emails stand out

  • Write a compelling subject line.
  • Keep your email concise and easily read, with numbers and bullet points for clarity.
  • Use high-quality images of the abandoned products.
  • Set up urgency triggers, like limited-time offers, to encourage quick action.
  • Make sure your CTA button is clear and prominent.
  • Send the email within 2-4 hours of cart abandonment. Limit the number of follow-up emails to 3—a reminder, a limited-time offer, and a final message with an alternate product recommendation.
  • Useproof Alternative
  • Social Proof Tools
  • Fomo Alternatives

Build a Wall of Love for Free Today with Testimonial

Customer testimonials boost credibility and trust. Seventy-two percent of customers say that positive testimonials increase their confidence in a business. And when it comes to buying decisions, 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. People want to know about the experiences of others before making a purchase. This is especially true for high-ticket items or businesses they’ve never engaged with.
Testimonial simplifies the process of building trust and credibility for businesses. Our software allows easy collection and display of authentic client testimonials, featuring video and text options, an embeddable 'wall of love' widget, a smart Email Assistant, and third-party review imports. Ideal for content creators, agencies, eCommerce, and SaaS companies, Testimonial helps boost your credibility and conversion rates by showcasing real customer experiences. Build a wall of love for free today with Testimonial.

Written by

Damon Chen
Damon Chen

Founder of Testimonial

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