Online Shopping Cart Abandonment: The Latest Figures

Shopping cart abandonment is a major problem for any business attempting to sell products or services online. And there are various solutions available to help prevent people giving up on their buying journey before they have passed through the checkout.

A new study from SaleCycle has looked at cart abandonment over the first three months of 2015, revealing that a little over three quarters of all e-commerce baskets were put to one side rather than transitioned to a full transaction during this period.

The report not only looked at the percentage of people who stop shopping after adding items to their digital basket, but also the trends which have an impact on the likelihood of cart abandonment occurring.

Ultimately it is down to businesses to seek out the help of professionals offering web design in Chichester or other areas of the UK, including sites like zetasoft.co.uk, so that they can tackle abandonment head on. But understanding the causes is just as important as taking action.

Highs & Lows

The report found that the travel sector is most likely to result in cart abandonment, with 82.7 per cent of online baskets given the cold shoulder.

Fashion, on the other hand, seems to secure better conversion rates overall, with a 66.8 per cent abandonment rate suggesting consumers seeking this type of item are more comfortable with the idea of committing to a purchase rather than walking away.

Retail as a whole sat roughly in between these two, with 77.5 per cent of all carts abandoned in Q1 of 2015. And so the businesses must clearly face up to the fact that convincing people to shop with them is hard, both online and on the high street.

Mitigating Factors

Saturday evening between 8pm and 9pm is the point at which analysts discovered people were most likely to abandon an online shopping cart. And of course there are tools available to sites that want to reconnect with customers and try to win them round to complete a transaction.

Chiefly if a customer is already registered with a retailer, an email can be sent to alert them to items being left untouched in their cart. And the report found that a little over 40 per cent of these messages are opened, with almost 12 per cent then generating clicks, down from Q4 of 2014.

Design Strategies

With recent developments such as Google offering users the opportunity to place orders from within mobile search results, there are more ways than ever for businesses to engage with customers and avoid abandonment rates spiralling out of control.

When it comes to site design, analysts recommend giving customers multiple options to help them return to the checkout, examine their basket, add new items and generally navigate the site, meaning that wherever they look on the page they have a branching path available rather than a narrow corridor.

Consumer fickleness and flights of fancy will mean that lowering cart abandonment rates is a tall order, but with the right design tools it should be possible.