This is the second post in a series about building and running an e-commerce website.
Stop losing sales, increase your website conversions
So you’ve decided that you are going to start an e-commerce website in 2020. You’ve spent the money and time to get a site built, customers start coming to your site, but no one is buying anything. What could be the reason people aren’t purchasing your products, and how do you find out how to fix whatever bugs your shopping cart must have. Today’s article is going to speak about abandoned carts, and how by collecting some stats on what your users are doing, we can fine tune your e-commerce website to be a money making machine.
What is an abandoned cart?
When potential customers come to your website, they can look around, see products they like which they will then add to their cart. But for some reason, they never complete the checkout process and you never see a sale. They for whatever reason, close the browser and go somewhere else. We build our e-commerce websites with abandoned cart tracking so we can figure out why your users are leaving, and turn them into paying customers. Some estimates are as high as 75% of people will abandon their carts.
Why do customers abandon their shopping carts?
Their are many different reasons, and they will vary depending on your industry, but the repeat offender is shipping.
Shipping Costs
The main cause of cart abandonment is unforeseen shipping expenses. This could mean you are charging to much for shipping, and the customer decided they will look to a competitor for a better deal. Or it could just mean you weren’t transparent in your shipping costs, and weren’t able to easily find out how much it would cost. The easy fix for this is to make sure your shipping rates are competitive. Are there other couriers, postal services you can use? Don’t try and overcharge on shipping, it’s a better move to undercharge slightly and to have made a sale, then to make no sale at all! Make sure you have a clearly visible shipping page on your website, or you have somewhere on your website your shipping costs. No one likes a nasty suprise when they check out.
Shipping Locations
While your business may be based in Australia, the internet opens you up to the entire world. Our customer Chuckle and Wood only had shipping set up for Australia, but then they started getting messages about shipping to New Zealand and the United States. Using your abandoned cart information, you can see where people are trying to ship to. If you can see a particular area is prone to not checkout, first make sure you can ship your product their, then check your rates are affordable.
Payment Methods
You may have your preferred payment methods, well so do customers. All of our websites can integrate with many payment gateways such as AfterPay, PayPal and Stripe to take credit card information and Apple Pay. Sometimes people can have a bad experience with a provider and they refuse to use them again, what if that provider, is the only provider you provide! Making sure you make it as easy as possible for customers to give you their money is critically important.
Prices Are Too High
The internet is a big place, you may be the only business in your area that provides a service or product, but you aren’t competing with people in your local town, you are competiting on a nationwide, or global scale. Your prices must be worth it. Find new ways to add value to your products, offering free shipping can help offset high costs. Longer return periods can also ease consumers concerns.
Confusing Experience
Your brand new shopping website may just be too hard and confusing to use. This is where Google Analytics helps. You can see what type of devices your clients are using. If 90% of your visitors are on mobile devices, you better make sure you have a responsive website design, and the overal design flow helps mobile users checkout.
Trust
You may have all of the above, but your website doesn’t look right. Consumers don’t want to be scammed, make sure your website looks professional. Displaying reviews of your products for Google, or Instagram posts can help others trust your business.
That’s it for this article, we will keep putting these out, and hopefully you start seeing more sales on your new e-commerce website, and if you don’t, give us a call