What is cart abandonment?

The definition of an abandoned shopping cart should not cause any difficulties to anyone. The customer reviews the offer, selects the products, sets them up, adds them to the basket and … leaves the store instead of completing the transaction. An abandoned shopping cart is not only unsold hundreds of articles, but also a wasted marketing budget. Overall you not only invest in the products but in marketing campaigns:

• Positioning and Google Ads,
• Cooperation with bloggers and your blog,
• Facebook page.

Above expenses were supposed to boost your sales. Your sales are determined not only by customers decision but also by various steps that led a customer to your offer. That’s why you can not afford to ignore unfinished orders! In order to effectively minimize this process, you need to know where the abandoned baskets are coming from and to what you should pay attention to when searching for the cause of this occurrence.

Where do abandoned carts come from?

The reasons for abandoned baskets can be noticed at every stage of the shopping process. Although the unfinalized transaction may be the result of many inconveniences noticed by the client, they can be generalized to an overly complicated, unclear and purchasing process that takes too much time.

Reasons for abandoned carts happening because of the software:

• Too many steps in the shopping process.
• The need to register on the site before buying.
• Inability to find a field for a rebate code and convenient rebate conversion.
• No purchase summary- which the customer will check the product parameters selected earlier.

The Offerer shopping cart is characterized by the maximum simplification that consumers appreciate.

Reasons for abandoned shopping carts related to your offer:

• No preferred form of delivery.
• Too expensive shipping of goods or hidden costs.
• Inability to pay in a previously chosen way, eg by credit card.
• An incomplete assortment that prevents you from using cross-selling and the customer to buy complementary products.

How to analyze abandoned carts?

Before you start making any conclusions about the possibility of improving the purchasing process, you must take into account the fact that many buyers came to you with the intention of looking at the goods, checking whether the discount coupon work and not necessarily make an order at this moment.

In the analysis of abandoned baskets, individual behaviors should not be taken into account. Only reproducible data will allow us to draw accurate conclusions.

All important data has been included in the abandoned shopping cart tool located in the marketing tab in the store’s admin panel.

1.  The duration of the session

It can be concluded that people whose sessions on the website of the online store were very short-lived, only wanted to check the price or availability of articles and were not about to finalize the transaction. That’s why your observations should focus on customers who have spent a while checking your offer.

2.  The degree of complexity of the purchasing process

Information about the visited subpages by the customer cannot be ignored. Based on this information, you can conclude, for example, about the unclear form of division of goods. Complicated shopping process can be a sign of a reason for not purchased products.

3.  Place of abandoning the basket

The moment of abandonment of basket by customers will indicate what is inconvenient in the purchasing process. The customer leaves the shopping cart in the ordering stage? Perhaps he does not have his preferred forms of payment and delivery. Leaving the store after going through several subpages? Maybe customer did not find the products he was interested in.

4.  Traffic source

Thanks to the visibility of the traffic source, you can examine the effectiveness of your advertising campaign. On the basis of the websites displayed on the right side, you will check the conversion from various traffic sources. Perhaps one of the forms will turn out to be significantly more effective than others?

How to reduce the number of abandoned carts

The data shown in the abandoned shopping carts tool should be divided into two categories:

• Registered customers – email addresses left will help you recover an abandoned shopping cart. It’s good to use remarketing techniques that will remind your clients about unfinished shopping will be a perfect solution.
• New customers and not registered – due to the lack of email addresses you will not able to perform remarketing. This does not mean that the information obtained is useless. On the contrary! Although each of the stores should be considered individually, there are certain rules that are a guide to improving the purchasing process.

 What does it might mean when the cart is being abandoned in the final stage of purchasing?

• Invalid rebate code or difficulty to find the field section for the code.
• Using cart as a wish list.
• Too high prices that the customer did not expect.

The Offerer basket structure avoids the above-mentioned reasons for the cancellation of the purchase.

The reason for cart abandonment in the ordering process

• Too high delivery cost.
• Lack of a convenient form of delivery and payment.
• The need to fill too many fields.
• The requirement to set up an account before finalizing the transaction.
• No shipping to abroad.

Lack of preferred payment and delivery methods is one of the most common reasons for shopping cart abandoned

 

Reasons for returning back to the shopping after abandoning basket?

• The unintuitive way of navigating the website and inability to find certain products
• Lack of goods.
• Unattractive prices.

Carefully examine and track the movements of potential clients on your website. This is a great way to know their needs- especially regarding the form of payment and delivery. Make your shopping cart intuitive, user-friendly and simple (remember to ask the smallest possible amount of data according to the GDPR regulations). Also, think to prepare a ‘Wish List’ option in your online store. The desire to save products for later is one of the frequent ways of non-standard use of the cart by customers. Providing the dedicated function will allow you to eliminate a large part of the abandoned carts.

Abandoned baskets in the online store

For sure you have visited many online stores, choose products and put it the basket and eventually, you left this store by not placing the order. An unexpected phone call, a long queue, a high price – these are just some of the reasons for resigning from the shopping. The rules appearing in the e-commerce market do not differ from the models learned in stationary trading.

Although the e-commerce market gives bigger opportunities than stationery shops. At the same time, this does not mean that we have to look at the growing number of abandoned baskets with folded hands. Hence, you have the possibility to track the whole shopping process. The knowledge gained from the abandoning carts will help you in the finding of the inconvenience and optimization of the purchasing process.

Do not forget that e-merchandising or an effective presentation of products in the online store will allow you to provide the customer with all the information and encourage them to buy!

How to open a first online store?

1. Do market research

You have certainly noticed that there are more and more online stores on the market, so to achieve desirable success, you have to take actions that will help you stand out from the rest. First, focus on the competition, you can take several factors into the consideration: price, store design, product presentation, promotions and marketing.

2. Name your store and buy domain

After making a decision about the industry, it’s time to choose the name for your online store. The name is a very significant aspect it should refer to the type of business and products you offer. Remember it should be catchy so clients could easily recall your brand in the future.

Have you already chosen a logo for your brand? If so, now it’s a time to buy the domain. Don’t hesitate with this step as there are a number of people who looking to buy a domain and can overtake your name. Make sure the internet address will have the same name as your store name.

3. Choose the best e-commerce software and open an online store

Choosing an effective software will determine the success of your first online store, so take a moment to do careful research and choose the best solution. The market is full of e-commerce platforms on which you can create your online store. Most of the platforms have a free trial period and access to the admin panel. This will help you to check the solution before purchasing it.

The Offerer software you can try for 14 days for free without any obligations

Why Offerer software? First of all, the admin panel is extremely simple and intuitive to use, if you are not a programmer it’s great solution for you. In addition, there is a hint system that will help with the navigation through the platform.

When choosing a proper software, be sure to choose the one that will enable you to integrate with various systems such as payment gateways, couriers, warehouses etc. This will make much easier for you to manage your online store.

4. Create an attractive graphic design

Graphics is very often a deal breaker. Make sure your website is user-friendly and transparent. Take a chance and implement unique and special ideas. Remember about all graphics elements: colors, menus, access to promotions, leading products should look desirable for clients so it will convince them to purchase.

If you are not sure about your design skills, you can always rely on professionals. You can order individual graphic design or use the store template creator available in the subscription price. This will allow in a simple way to manage your first online store.

5. Add statistics system

While considering the constant development of your online store remember to add a tool that will allow accessing to the most crucial statistics about your website traffic. A free and very popular option is Google Analytics, this tool allows to determine which online campaigns bring the biggest traffic and conversation, the worse performing pages, what people click on the most, what people search on your website, visitors location, abandoned carts.

6. Prepare “about us” page

One of the most crucial factors is preparing a good about us page.
About us page usually includes information about your company but also possibilities that you offer for example the type and cost of delivery, accepted payment methods, returns, complaints policy. This type of information is very important to show on your website, it gives transparency to the clients, which builds trust. Your website should include Terms and Conditions and Private Policy ( preparation of those documents should be overlooked by law professionals).

7. Enter products and choose unique descriptions

After fulfilling the above steps you can start your sale at any moment, hence focus on this two steps:

• You can add the goods manually by configuring them in anyway.
• Integration with wholesalers: with a few clicks you can add products database to your online store. Thanks to this function, within 10-15 minutes, more than ten thousands of items can appear in your online store. 

A very important factor to focus on is a product description. Avoid Double Content and do not copy descriptions directly from the producers. The first content is valuable and copied one will be considered by Google as useless. If you want to take good care of your store’s SEO, beware of duplicating text.

8. Make a few tests of your online store

Before launching your website, make a few tests to be sure that it works correctly.
To ensure that it is perfectly adjusted, check:

• Prepare tests of store operations, which eliminate the occurrence of possible technical errors (e.g the appearance of blank pages);
• Usability testing– examine whether the store is intuitive enough;
• Browser compatibility testing– responsiveness – with Offerer, all available templates are adapted to mobile devices.

9. Promote your brand

Your online store with rich graphics and content works without the smallest complaint? Great, but still not enough to exist on the market. Successful Promotion Campaigns in the online world can be introduced as advertisements or good and effective SEO. One of the most serious and worth considering is Google AdWords ( Google Ads)– sponsored links and so-called Adsense, which consist in matching the content of ads to the content of the page currently being viewed. In this case, the cost will accrue based on the number of clicks.

The most effective “natural” and long-term method to promote the online store is positioning. What is referred to as positioning? In this way, we determine the process of systematically growing in the ranking of search results by key phrases at Google.

Summary

We hope that this article will help you to start your own online store. Remember to start from market research, name your store and buy the domain. Next chose e-commerce software, that will meet your expectations. Also, pay attention to your shop design. If you are not sure about your design skills, you can always count on professionals- order individual projects. While adding products use unique descriptions, and lastly promote your store.