In the ecommerce world, there’s a lot of focus on generating leads. You wouldn’t be alone in concentrating on the importance of social media and other outlets to draw traffic to your site. And, that is important. In fact, you’ll struggle to reach success without it. But, leads in themselves don’t do you any good if you aren’t converting them into sales.
If you find that the majority of customers leave your site before buying, it’s a sure sign something isn’t right. Of course, to determine what that is, you need to take a closer look at what’s happening. That means checking your site analytics and making a note of when customers click away. If they leave the moment they see your product photography, for instance, you can be pretty sure that’s the problem. If they don’t proceed past your homepage, you may want to redo it. Either way; these are easy enough issues to spot.
But, things get more confusing when you consider that many shoppers abandon full carts. They apparently liked your site enough to look around and even put things in their cart. So, why have they left at the last minute? In truth, this is a more common occurrence than you might think, and we’re going to look at the leading causes.
A nasty surprise
In a survey on Shopify, 56% of customers stated they abandoned their carts because of unexpected costs. The majority of companies keep things like shipping and extra charges hidden. In some ways that makes sense. By this stage, there’s a hope customers are too invested to turn back. But, that thinking obviously isn’t paying off. So, if you hide charges, it might be time to reconsider. Remember that trust is vital in customer interactions. If they know what they’re paying from the off, there’s less chance of abandonment.
Safety worries
With cases of online fraud more prevalent than ever, many of us are wary of where and how we use our card details. In fact, few online shoppers are now comfortable to type details straight into a website. Instead, they expect secure payment platforms like the one offered by BlueSnap. So, instead of providing an open form for card details, make sure you have a reliable payment process. That way, customer’s won’t think twice about completing their purchases.
Slow going
Slow loading checkouts are another leading cause for this issue. By this point, a customer has already spent a fair amount of time on their site. They’re ready to pack up and get going. So, they aren’t likely to stick around if your checkout process takes a year to complete. In many ways, think of this as you would checkouts in a physical shop. Long queues are going to lead to an abandoned basket. And, that’s precisely what’s happening with your ecommerce store. So, do what you can to speed things up. Remove advertisements, and consider your server. Then, sit back and see how many more sales follow through to completion.
