Let’s start with the basic definition of cart abandonment ’’when a visitor or shopper visits an eCommerce website with the intent to make a purchase and add products to the shopping cart but exit the website without making the purchase. Such products which are left in the cart without making a purchase are referred to as ‘abandoned’.
For example- when a shopper adds products to the online shopping cart but leaves the website without buying the product.
There are many categories of abandonment across different industries but basket or cart is the most common.
Some of the categories of abandonment for an eCommerce business are listed below:
1. Cart abandonment
Cart abandonment is when a customer or shopper adds products to the cart but does not buy them and exits the website without completing the purchase. This happens a lot and results in huge revenue loss to the industry. An average eCommerce cart abandonment rate is 69%.
To avoid such situations, a proper analysis is required to understand why shoppers are popping out from the websites without completing the purchase.
The cart abandonment rate on your eCommerce store can be computed by dividing the number of accomplished purchases by the number of shopping carts generated by the shopper. Then deduct this value from one and multiply by 100 to get the percentage. This shows the potential interest that did not result in a sale.
This rate is calculated to help the retailers to recognize the reasons for fluctuation in revenue and helps them to make improvements where they are lacking behind.
The maximum rate of cart abandonment is on mobile phones according to Barillance’s data.
2. Wishlist abandonment
Wish lists are a variety of desired products saved by buyers to their user account, having some interest without immediate intent to purchase. Offering a wish lists effectively reduces shopping cart abandonment and fulfills sales from customers who showed intent but didn’t purchase the product. Wish lists are advantageous, they remind the customer of a product which they had interest in buying and help in boosting the sales of the merchant by giving such reminders. Adding wishlist features can decrease your website’s cart abandonment rate as it reminds the customers of the product in which they have shown interest and lures them to buy that product by giving them special offers and discounts.Sometimes, customers add products to their wishlist to compare the prices from different websites and choose which site offers the best price or wait for the sale or discount period. So a wishlist is a very important feature for a website.
3. Browse abandonment
In simple understanding Browser abandonment is when a user bounces off the website while browsing for products without adding products to cart. Further Browse abandonment occurs when a shopper visits your site, looks at your offerings, but leaves without adding anything to their shopping cart or making a purchase. Our research indicates that of 100 visitors to your site, 39 customers look at products or services but only 4 buy any.
Recapturing this lost revenue is critical for retailers and digital marketers.
There are numerous reasons for it to happen as:
Vague product descriptions can send them away, as can confusing, non-existent, or difficult to find information on shipping, payment, and returns. Or browsers might become distracted by a phone call, the end of their lunch break, etc.
Ways to prevent browser abandonment :
1. Process of browsing should be simple and easy to browse.
2. Pricing should be competitive and in an ongoing trend
CONCLUSION
So in the end we can conclude that cart abandonment is a very important parameter in the ecommerce industry as it affects sales of a website. We should regularly check our cart abandonment data to improve our services and improve online experience for the customers. If the purchase process is very complex the customer might end up exiting the website without making a purchase. All factors such as purchase process, shipping issues, lack of payment options, etc should be considered and necessary changes should be made to reduce cart abandonment.
Author Bio: Rupinder Kaur works as an SEO Analyst and passionate writer. She is currently all in work writing about marketing, Push notifications for Ecommerce, technology and trends in accounting and tax.
