So, your eCommerce website has been up and running for a couple weeks. A few sales are coming in and you’re seeing customers write product reviews, but overall sales aren’t what you expected.
You decide to look at your eCommerce analytics. As you’re looking through transaction data, lo and behold, your sell through rate is not as good as you thought. Many shoppers who started a transaction never finished it. What gives?
This is called your cart abandonment rate, and it’s a problem for all types of eCommerce businesses.
That said, what is the average cart abandonment rate in 2021? More importantly, why is shopping cart abandonment a problem for retailers, and what can be done about it?
Continue reading to find the answers and make a plan for abandoned cart recovery.
What Is Cart Abandonment Rate?
Cart abandonment rate is the percentage of shoppers who add at least one item to their online shopping cart, but leave your website without making that purchase.
No matter why a prospect abandoned their cart, it’s frustrating to discover how frequently it happens. By using shopping cart data to calculate your business’s abandoned cart rate, you can get a feel for what needs to be addressed right away.
How To Calculate Abandoned Cart Rate
Calculating abandoned cart rate is simple. Here is the formula to use:
Total number of abandoned shopping carts / total number of initiated transactions x 100 = abandoned cart rate
This formula gives you the percentage of shopping carts that were abandoned before a user completed their transaction. If you don’t get a clean, whole number after this calculation (in many cases you won’t), you can round up to the nearest whole number for easier math.
Example:
743 abandoned shopping carts / 1050 initiated transactions x 100 = 71% cart abandonment rate
Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
The shopping cart abandonment rate is much higher than you may expect. According to ongoing research, between 60 and 80% of customers leave their cart at some point in the checkout process.
Recent statistics can help you understand just how far-reaching this problem is. Keep reading for more data on the average cart abandonment rate and the percentage of buyers who jump ship on mobile devices.
Average Cart Abandonment Rate
eCommerce marketing experts say the average cart abandonment rate runs as high as 69-70% in most industries, which is staggeringly high. Bear in mind that some shoppers who initially abandon their cart will return to complete the purchase later.
This is where abandoned cart emails come into play. An abandoned cart email is an email sent to someone who abandoned their shopping cart, in an effort to get them to return to the site and complete the purchase. Ensure a steady rate of purchases on your own site with our abandoned cart email template.
Mobile Cart Abandonment Rate
If you thought the previous stats were bad, you’ll be even more surprised by the following data. The average mobile cart abandonment range is between 80-86%, and it’s higher on smartphones than tablets.
There are several reasons why mobile devices see a higher rate of cart abandonment. One reason is shoppers are on the go when using a mobile device, meaning they’re mentally less committed to whatever they’re buying. When people are sitting down at a computer, they have more time and mental space to commit to a process, no matter how small.
A second reason is many eCommerce websites aren’t optimized for mobile apps and devices. If your eCommerce website builder doesn’t have mobile responsiveness built in, smartphone shoppers will see something completely different than desktop shoppers. Chances are buttons will be crowded together, forms may not work, and your site bounce rate will be high.
Rather than going it alone, you can use BlueCart eCommerce. Our web- and mobile-optimized platform is SEO friendly and has a 2-step checkout process built-in. You don’t need to worry about the technical stuff of running a business because we take care of it for you.
We also have industry-lowest payment processing fees and access to over 95,000 buyers in our online marketplace. Book a demo today to learn more about our platform.
How To Reduce Cart Abandonment Rate
Abandoned carts can cost you hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year. Instead of letting those sales slip away, do everything you can to encourage buyers to finish their purchases.
Here are the top six ways to reduce your cart abandonment rate:
- Optimize your site’s user experience (UX) and user interface (UI). Customers are drawn to websites that are easy to use. If your site appears outdated, loads slowly, or is difficult to navigate, you’re leaving money on the table. Customers will leave your site and find comparable products on a better website. If you’re not sure how to modify your site, reviewing the best eCommerce website examples and dropshipping websites will help.
- Limit your checkout process to one or two pages. For the importance of this factor, it gets surprisingly little attention. Customers who are ready to buy don’t want to spend lots of time dealing with payment gateway providers. The longer your checkout process is, the more likely buyers are to second-guess their cart size. This can lead to removing items or abandoning the cart altogether. If your checkout process is three pages or longer, work with an experienced developer to reduce the amount of time people spend on payment confirmation.
- Offer free shipping whenever possible. High shipping cost is a leading driver of cart abandonment. As little as $10 in eCommerce shipping is enough to turn away more than 80% of buyers. Talk with your financial team and see what can be done to offer free shipping, or at least build the price of shipping into your products (which customers don’t notice). Worst case scenario, offer free shipping for all orders above a certain order amount, like $50 or $100. BlueCart’s built-in shipping tools aggregate the buying power of all our customers to negotiate the best possible rates on over 60 shipping companies.
- Provide a guest checkout option. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is assuming all of their customers view their company the same. Some customers love your products and want to sign up for emails; others want one item and don’t want to be on your newsletter. Forcing customers to register an account will deter a percentage of your buyers. Instead, give them the chance to provide basic contact info and payment details. You still earn a sale and the buyer isn’t forced to stick around. Alternatively, you can prompt customers to create an account when their purchase is complete. Buyers who like your products and plan to return will have an easier time with future purchases.
- Set up automatic abandoned cart emails. This is one of the most underrated strategies any marketer or business owner can use. When customers begin the checkout process, ensure that their email address and name form fields are the first ones to be filled out. Then, set up eCommerce marketing automation in your eCommerce email marketing platform that’s triggered by an unfinished transaction. The prospect will get an email after a couple minutes reminding them their purchase is incomplete. The average abandoned cart email sees a 45% open rate and 20% clickthrough rate--far higher than your typical campaign email.
- Create a “Save for Later” or wish list option. Giving buyers the opportunity to save products for later means they won’t buy immediately, but it doesn’t mean they won’t buy at all. Research shows that up to 25% of shoppers add products that they plan to buy later, and 17% use cart saving features when given the chance. It’s impossible to know what percentage of those buyers will still transact, but it’s better to capture some than none at all.
Bringing The Customer Back to The Cart
Getting people to follow through on their purchase intent is not an easy task. Your products must meet a specific need, be priced affordably, be made with quality materials, and ship quickly. There’s more customers may consider, but if you nail these factors, you’re already ahead of most businesses.
On top of this, your checkout process needs to be fast and effortless. Anything that takes longer than a couple minutes or imposes unwanted costs will create abandoned carts.
After reading through these strategies, hopefully, you feel equipped to make your business’s abandoned cart rate the lowest it’s ever been. Choose a few strategies to test right away so you can drive better engagement and higher sales.
Frequently Asked Questions About eCommerce Cart Abandonment
How do you calculate cart abandonment rate?
To calculate cart abandonment rate you need to divide the number of successfully completed purchases by the number of shopping carts that your customers created. Then you have to subtract that value from 1 and multiply by 100 in order to get a percentage.
What is cart abandonment rate?
Cart abandonment rate is when users add products to their online shopping carts on eCommerce websites but don't end up going through with the checkout process or completing their orders. How to reduce cart abandonment rate?
You can reduce cart abandonment rate by:
- Ensuring quick page load speed
- Being transparent about costs
- Including thumbnail images of products during the checkout process
- Offering guest checkout options
- Having easy navigation from the store to the cart