Site traffic is up, but sales aren’t? It is probably the most common question of every eCommerce store today. If you belong to the eCommerce Industry, then you must have heard a million times that most customers wishlist their favorite items in their shopping carts but end up not buying them. Customers add items to their cart, even proceed with the checkout process, but abandon their cart in the mid-checkout. The situation is usually referred to as Checkout Abandonment.
A study says that 70% of customers abandon their carts due to their problems during the checkout process. The complex, time-consuming process of checkouts drive your potential shoppers to abandon their shopping carts and seek a better experience on your competitor’s website.
An eCommerce website with high Checkout abandonment rates signifies that they need to improve their checkout procedure. In this blog, you will learn about ways to combat Checkout abandonment, but before jumping to the solution, let explore a bit about the customer journey and how checkout abandonment is different from Cart abandonment.
Understanding Customer’s buying stages
When a customer lands on your eCommerce store, what he/she does from start to end is all included in their buying process. Shoppers first –
- Search: look for their favorite categories browse through the products in that category
- Select: choose their favorite items and wishlist them
- Add to cart: after realizing that they’ve found items they needed, they add those items to their shopping cart.
- Initiate Checkout: After realizing that they’ve found items needed, they add those items to their shopping cart.
- Payment: once they proceed with the checkout, customers initiate payment and make payment by opting for their desired payment method.
And that’s all! These are the customer buying stages.
How Checkout Abandonment and Cart Abandonment are different?
The major difference between cart abandonment and checkout abandonment is the stage at which users abandon their purchase. Cart abandonment usually occurs after adding the items to the shopping cart, while checkout abandonment happens during the checkout process.
In other words, checkout abandonment is different from cart abandonment because customers leave without purchasing. You will get a clear picture of both the terms by reading the following definitions of both the abandonments below.
What is Cart abandonment?
Cart abandonment occurs when a shopper browses the products, adds their favorite items to their shopping cart, and leaves the website without purchasing. Cart abandonment rate is usually calculated by dividing the total number of transactions by the total number of abandoned carts.
Since the cart stage occurs before the checkout process, the cart abandonment rates are usually higher than checkout abandonment rates.
What is Checkout Abandonment?
Checkout abandonment occurs when a shopper has initiated his/her shopping cart to the checkout process and then left abandoned without completing the purchase. The checkout abandonment rates are calculated by dividing the total number of completed transactions (completed orders) by the total number of started transactions (initiated orders).
As the checkout stage is closer to the customer journey’s purchasing stage, their rates are comparatively lower than the cart abandonment rates.
4 Major Reasons for Checkout Abandonment
1# Unexpected additional charges
Shipping charges, taxes, or other additional fees are the biggest reasons customers leave their cart during the checkout process. Customers wish to know what they will be paying for the item they are purchasing beforehand. When that doesn’t happen, and a sudden charge is asked at the checkout process, your customers tend to change their minds.
2# Long, complicated checkout process
Synonym of online shopping is fast and convenient, and if the checkout process is tedious and complex, customers find your site less appealing and more time taking. The longer it takes, the less convenient is your website’s shopping experience.
3# Forced registration or account creation
Registration or account creation at the time of payment can lead down your customer’s expectations and drive them to abandon their checkout process half-way. Though account creation or registration is a potential strategy for increasing subscribers/users, it can interrupt and slow down the payment process, which removes the convenience and speed of online shopping.
4# Payment security concern
Payment security is the most important concern for a customer who is willing to make a
purchase from your website and input their financial information into your database.
BigCommerce Open Checkout – The Ultimate Solution!
On 17th November 2020, BigCommerce launched an open-source extension called Open Checkout to help BigCommerce merchants customize their Checkout page and provide a distinct online checkout experience.
The Open Checkout extension can be availed by the same production code empowering the native checkout solution – Checkout SDK. It is easy for BigCommerce Merchants to upgrade to this version.
The Open-checkout extension is designed to help you provide an easy checkout process. It offers features like contemporary B2B buying, new retail environments, branded checkout pages, and customer group rules. To read more about Open-checkout and its features in detail, click here.
Ways To Combat High Checkout Abandonment Rates
1# Eliminate mandatory signup
Mandatory sign-up during the checkout process is the biggest contributor to Checkout Abandonment. Most new customers check options on your store as a guest and wish to proceed with buying products as a guest for the first time. And registration or sign-up can drive them away. Hence, eliminating the mandatory sign-up step can help you streamline your checkout process and make your customer’s buying experience smooth.
2# Email Subscription at the beginning
It is usually advisable not to add extra stages or steps during the checkout process. If you ask for an email subscription initially, it will be easy to follow up with your customers after leaving their shopping cart abandoned.
3# Offer a wide range of payment options
Offerings as many possible options as available in payment so that customers can opt for their preferred choice. With multiple payment options, you can create a perception of more security.
4# Changes in the address at the order summary page
Provide flexibility of changing address at the order summary page so that your users can easily make changes in the address information if wrongly filled. This will indeed reduce the friction of making changes at this crucial stage.
Wrapping Up
High Checkout abandonment rate is the major concern of most businesses today. And if you are a Bigcommerce store owner, then there is a solution for your problem.
Besides this, for 24/7 assistance and support regarding the store development or designing the Bigcommerce store, CedCommerce is your ideal choice. We are the Official Development Partners of BigCommerce.
So, reach out to our professionals right away and know how to customize your customer’s online checkout experience effortlessly.