5 Ways Shopping Apps Can Reduce Cart Abandonment

This article informs the readers about Cart Abandonment. It also explains five ways how mobile commerce platforms can increase the cart abandonment rate.

Whether you're a third-party vendor on a mobile commerce platform or a retailer with your own site, you must be familiar with the dissatisfaction when a customer leaves a shopping purchase midway. Cart abandonment is the term coined to define the behaviour of consumers abandoning a virtual shopping cart after adding products to it. According to recent reports, a whopping 73 per cent of mobile shoppers deserting a site or app after spending some time shopping; this is a staggering statistic for a demographic that spends an average of ten hours connected digitally.

For a mobile platform, a high cart abandonment rate means something is preventing the customers from completing the transaction. It may be high shipping costs, hidden taxes, trust issues, privacy concerns, or something else. While a consumer doesn't need to justify his shopping behaviour, the vendor must understand this behaviour.

The cart abandonment statistic is a key metric for any mobile commerce platforms to keep track of. A high percentage indicates a poor user experience or broken sales funnel. Improving this statistic leads directly to more sales and revenue, so optimizing the checkout flow is a core area of focus for many online retailers.

If you're a mobile platform looking for ways to convert a browser into a consumer, then this post is for you. Below are five ways a shopping app can reduce cart abandonment.

1. Adding more payment options

Picture this. You're a user who's come across a great site with some really cool products. You spend hours browsing and finally pick the perfect item from your wishlist. Only to realize at the checkout that the site only accepts credit cards while the only option you have is a debit card. Frustrating, isn't it? In today's global economy, m-commerce has no borders. Revenue can come from anywhere - debit cards, internet banking, e-wallets or even phone payment apps. It's time to embrace the modern shopping landscape. By adding multiple payment options, buyers don't feel 'restricted' or 'powerless'.

2. Improving product accuracy and quality

Product content quality is a big factor in the conversion of mobile sales. Right from the product description to the images, the quality and completeness can play a significant role in reducing shopping cart abandonment. Poor or incomplete product content can also impact brand equity and future purchase decisions. Even worse, a lack of quality product data across the retail sector provides an opportunity for a vendor to stand out from the crowd. Product data helps keep the buyer informed, assured and confident in their decision making. By showing transparency, you're causing them to be more likely to purchase instead of abandoning their shopping cart.

3. Cutting shipping costs

Over excessive shipping charges when not added until the end of the checkout process can ultimately make a shopper abandon the purchase. As Baymard Institute's study states, around 61 per cent of users who abandon their cart do so because of shipping costs being too high. It's better not to disappoint the shopper with unexpected shipping prices, but rather inform the shopper up-front, or at the beginning of the checkout process, what the delivery charges will be.

4. Addressing technical problems

'I love sites with buggy checkouts' said no one ever. All technology include mobile apps is susceptible to technical issues and glitches. Give your customers great shopping experience by monitoring your mobile analytics and do regular reviews of the checkout process to ensure there are no show-stopping bugs. Also, ensure that the code of your app is optimized so there are no long load times.

5. Simplifying the navigation process

There are many things to consider when designing a shopping navigation experience. Most of these are standard UX considerations, but there are going to be mobile-specific design considerations too. Are you going to integrate your mobile site with your current offering? Will you use a responsive or adaptive design? A lot of this will boil down to context. But the bottom line remains the same - The more clicks customers have to go through, the more likely they are to desert your shopping app before completing a purchase. This is evident by a 2018 study by Statistica.com informing that 25 per cent of users who abandon carts because of overly complex navigation.

 

In the end, remember that you can only minimize the rate of shopping cart abandonment. Not every user who comes to your site will convert into a customer. Hope this short article helped you gain some new insights. Have a nice day!