High shopping cart abandonment is perhaps one of the worst problems an ecommerce business can face. 

Imagine doing a solid job of targeting the right audience, capturing engagement with your landing page, and compelling them to reach the checkout process — only to have customers leave before completing the transaction. 

That's your customer acquisition dollars down the drain. 

The good news is that shopping cart abandonment is easily fixable. 

In this post, you'll learn everything there is to know about cart abandonment, what it means for ecommerce, and proven strategies to fix it. 

What is Shopping Cart Abandonment? 

Shopping cart abandonment occurs when a customer leaves your ecommerce website after adding products to their cart. 

This is tracked using the cart abandonment rate metric, which uses this formula:

Abandoned carts add up to lost potential revenue no matter how you slice it. But on the bright side, that means you have customers who are strongly interested in buying from you. 

It's just a matter of answering "why" customers abandoned their carts and addressing those issues.

For most ecommerce businesses, it's usually one (or a combination) of the following:

• Unexpected costs — Customers dislike being ambushed by additional fees that are only revealed upon checkout. This includes taxes, shipping fees, currency conversions, and so on.
• Complicated checkout — Unnecessary friction, such as mandatory account creation and complicated forms, can put off customers who are otherwise ready to make a purchase. Another offender is the use of multi-page checkout experiences that take way longer than needed. 
• Website performance issues — A total website crash can, of course, lead to an abandoned cart. Other issues like unstable elements, unresponsiveness, and slow loading times can cause customers to leave before completing the transaction. 
• Lack of supported payment options — In a handful of cases, customers are unable to complete their purchases due to the lack of payment options that are available to them. Remember, not all customers are willing to share their credit card information with online businesses, especially if they haven't heard of your brand before.
• Not enough information about the product — Lastly, some customers abandon during checkout simply due to general indecisiveness or uncertainty. While it seems purely like a customer-side issue, ecommerce brands can still influence their decision by highlighting elements that build buyer confidence.

Why Shopping Cart Abandonment is a Big Problem?

It should be clear from the get-go that cart abandonment will poke holes in your ecommerce sales funnel.

To put things into perspective, let's take a look at some data.

Lost Sales and Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) 

Statistics show that the ecommerce sector loses $18 billion in annual revenue to abandoned carts. 

This is primarily due to the value of potential sales that don't push through. 

Cart abandonment also represents missed opportunities to create longer-lasting customer relationships. This, in turn, impacts other revenue metrics like Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) and Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR). 

Marketing ROI

The more sales you lose to abandoned carts, the higher your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) gets. This means you end up paying more for each customer you convert, causing a big hit to your marketing ROI.

Keep in mind that 70.19% is the average cart abandonment rate in the ecommerce industry. That's a huge chunk of your marketing budget just falling short of generating sales. 

Customer Experience

Addressing your cart abandonment rate involves strategies that directly benefit the user experience. This includes streamlining the checkout process, improving loading speed, and ensuring transparency. 

Remember that — for ecommerce customers — the next alternative to your brand is just a few clicks away. Lose them once, and it will be extremely hard to win them back. 

Optimizing the Checkout Process

Ready to make the most out of your ecommerce traffic? 

Let's start at the ground zero of your cart abandonment problems — the checkout process.

1. Simplifying the Checkout Steps

If you want more customers, don't wear them out with a long, tedious checkout process. 

Identify steps that aren't absolutely essential to completing an order. For example, while it's acceptable to request the customer's name, address, and contact information, you don't really need them to answer a survey, specify their gender, or fill in their work information (except for B2B).                  

In addition to reducing the amount of required information, also consider providing a single-page checkout experience. 

2. Enable Guest Checkout

We get it — convincing customers to create an account is a big win for long-term sales. 

However, forcing them to create an account will likely do more harm than good. 

That said, try to offer a "guest checkout" option that eliminates the need to register and creates a more frictionless experience. Better yet, consider offering incentives for customers who willingly choose to create an account, like:

• Discount coupons
• Exclusive offers
• Same-day delivery
• Free or discounted delivery

3. Auto-fill and Saved Information 

Modern web browsers have the ability to save user information and automatically fill them into applicable fields.

This is a huge time-saver for customers — and an effective cure for a high cart abandonment rate. You just need to enable form autocompletion in your ecommerce platform.

4. Show a Progress Indicator

Although one-page checkouts are preferable, it's not always possible for certain types of products (i.e., custom pre-built computers). 

In which case, present customers with a progress indicator to inform customers how far along they are in the process. This may come in the form of a progress bar, page controls, or a list of collapsible section headers.

5. Minimize Distractions

Lastly, avoid derailing customers from the checkout process by showing irrelevant content or links. 

Some examples of visual clutter you should remove are:

• Banner advertisements
• Blog post suggestions
• Floating or sticky menus
• Popups

Apart from essential checkout elements, the only other elements you should include are related product recommendations and upselling offers. These are useful for bumping up your Average Order Value (AOV) — as long as they're relevant to the items in your customer's cart. 

Offering Transparent Pricing

Nothing annoys ecommerce customers more than hidden fees that will only appear late in the checkout process. 

Some customers may even see this as a breach of trust. 

After all, the price tag could be one of the reasons why they clicked the product in the first place. Catching them off-guard with additional fees will definitely leave a bad impression.

To effectively implement transparency in your pricing, consider the following tips:

• Display the full costs early — Be sure to present the total amount customers will have to get the product at their doorstep. 
• Avoid hidden fees — Itemize the product's costs to help customers feel more informed about their order. 
• Free shipping incentives —  If applicable, highlight the words "free shipping" in the product listing to increase the customer's perceived value.

Improving Website Speed and Performance

Whether you're running an ecommerce store or a B2B service marketplace, subpar website performance can single-handedly ruin the customer experience. 

In fact, about 53% of users abandon a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. 

To encourage more customers to stay through checkout, you need to invest in holistic performance optimization for your ecommerce website. 

Here's a quick rundown of your priorities:

1. Fast Load Times

Modern customers expect websites to load fast. 

While each ecommerce website has different performance optimization needs, there are a couple of must-have strategies that guarantee noticeable improvements:

• Compress or modernize your images — If your ecommerce platform isn't equipped with automatic image optimization (like Shopify), use tools like Kraken.io to easily compress visual assets. Alternatively, convert your images into modern, more efficient formats like WebP or AVIF with a tool like CloudConvert.
• Minimize JavaScript — When it comes to JavaScript, reducing its size or using "minification" to improve bandwidth efficiency is just the first part. You should also consider implementing techniques like asynchronous loading or dynamic rendering to improve loading speed. 
• Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) — Use CDN services like Cloudflare to reduce latency for customers globally. To increase performance gains further, opt for an edge delivery service that also enables data processing and content rendering closer to your customers' location.

2. Core Web Vitals Optimization

Keep in mind that loading speed is just one aspect of the user experience.

You also need to pay attention to your ecommerce website's stability and responsiveness in order to keep customers engaged. These aspects, along with loading speed, are tracked using your website's Core Web Vitals, namely: 

• Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — How long it takes (in seconds) to load the largest section of content on your page.
• Interaction to Next Paint (INP) — How quickly your website delivers a response from the first interaction.
• Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) —  The impact of unexpected page layout shifts on the user experience. 

Use PageSpeed Insights to track your Core Web Vitals and receive actionable optimization recommendations. 

3. Mobile Optimization

Today, mobile optimization is a non-negotiable for ecommerce websites, especially for those facing challenges with user experience and cart abandonment. 

Data from Statista reveals that 62% of all web page views are from mobile users. And, without optimizing your ecommerce site for smaller screens, don't expect your ecommerce conversions to grow any time soon.

Fortunately, most modern ecommerce platforms like Shopify come with mobile-friendly features right out of the box. Just remember the following best practices to ensure your mobile users aren't getting the short end of the stick:

• Add padding in between clickable elements to prevent accidental interactions.
• Use larger fonts to improve readability.
• Reduce visual clutter and consider prioritizing vertically-oriented images. 
• Implement support for one-click payments (e.g., Apple Pay and Google Pay).
• Enable Single Sign-On (SSO) with social media apps.

Looking for a plug-and-play performance optimization for your ecommerce site?

Nostra AI's Edge Delivery Engine is powered by over 310 edge servers — strategically located to allow near-instant loading speeds for users worldwide. Best of all, you'll notice a substantial performance improvement without having to expend internal resources. 

Click here to book a demo.

Implementing Personalized Retargeting Strategies

Here's the thing: Cart abandonment isn't something you can permanently fix. 

You can, however, go after customers who left your online store with items in their carts. 

With the help of these personalized retargeting strategies, you can re-capture your customers' engagement while the products are still fresh in their minds:

• Abandoned Cart Emails — Use tools like MailChimp or Moosend to automate abandoned cart emails, which have nearly double the open rate of regular marketing emails.
• Push Notifications — Set up push notifications with tools like PushOwl to remind customers about their abandoned carts. 
• Dynamic Retargeting Ads — Build smart campaigns on platforms like Google ads and Snapchat ads to dynamically advertise abandoned cart items. 

To maximize the effectiveness of these retargeting strategies, consider throwing in a few bonuses to sweeten the deal. A great example would be to offer incentives like limited-time discounts, free shipping, and free upgrades. 

Enhancing Trust and Security 

As far as cart abandonment goes, there are always customers who leave simply because they don't trust your brand enough. 

That's why your ecommerce website should be sprinkled with just the right amount of trust-building elements.

Check out these examples: 

• Trust badges — SSL certificates and secure checkout badges reassure customers that their sensitive information is safe with you. This is a game-changer for ecommerce startups catering to customers who've never heard of them before.  
• Secure payment options — Another way to bolster the confidence of customers is to roll out support for secure payment channels they already trust. These channels provide free assets and widgets (i.e., "Check Out with Apple Pay") to certify their integration with your ecommerce store. 
• Clear return policies and guarantees — Be sure to have clear, visible policies for returns and refunds early in the checkout process. Keep it simple and easy to understand to avoid potential disputes in the future.
• Customer reviews — Customer reviews let you leverage word-of-mouth marketing to increase conversions and reduce cart abandonment. You can generate more reviews to feature on your site by automating review request emails or survey forms after each successful transaction. 

Leveraging AI and Predictive Analytics

Just like with anything in ecommerce, optimizing your cart abandonment rate isn't about huge and quick wins. 

You need to aim for consistent, ongoing strategies — making data-driven adjustments as you go along. 

Here are three powerful tips that will help you leverage the power of data to find hard-hitting solutions to cart abandonment: 

• Behavioral analytics — In simple terms, behavioral analytics lets you create profiles of "at-risk" shoppers who are likely to leave their carts behind. Fullstory, for example, is a robust behavioral analytics and AI platform that lets you craft optimized customer experiences designed to minimize cart abandonment.
• Product Recommendations — Use tools like Dynamic Yield to present customers with relevant product recommendations based on real-time behavior data. This not only improves user engagement and reduces cart abandonment — it also helps supercharge your ecommerce store's AOV. 
• A/B Testing — Split test multiple variations of your checkout page to quickly spot improvement opportunities that would otherwise take weeks or months to uncover. Some of the best tools for this are Google Analytics 4, Hotjar, and Crazy Egg.

Case Study: Reducing Cart Abandonment with Nostra AI

To help you piece together a strategy for reducing cart abandonment, let's take a look at a real-world example. 

Fire Department Coffee is a veteran-owned coffee company that struggled to hit its revenue targets. 

The company had a visual-heavy design, which is great for piquing interest — but not so much in terms of maintaining engagement. Their website's performance tanked due to the excess of visual content peppered throughout their website. 

With the help of Levitate Foundry, Nostra AI was able to reduce Fire Department Coffee's Time To First Byte (TTFB) metric from 655ms to 98ms. This resulted in a significant improvement in conversion rate and cart abandonment. 

Very little work was required from the Fire Department Coffee team. In fact, the site's backend remained mostly intact outside of the Edge Delivery Engine's setup. 

Aside from reducing cart abandonment, Nostra AI also succeeded in helping Fire Department Coffee boost its AOV, CLV, and monthly recurring revenue.

Future Trends in Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment

Before we wrap up this post, here's a preview of what's in store for ecommerce cart abandonment optimization in the future:

• AI-Powered Personalization. As AI technologies improve at breakneck speed, businesses will only get better and better at leveraging user behavior data to create more streamlined checkout experiences. 
• Voice and Conversational Commerce — Alongside AI, voice assistants are also becoming very effective in stimulating user engagement and delivering personalized shopping experiences. 
• Payment Innovation — Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) schemes and crypto payments can also have a significant impact on ecommerce cart abandonment as adoption increases. 

Conclusion

Left unchecked, cart abandonment could be the single biggest reason why your ecommerce business's growth has stagnated (unless you're already losing money). 

By optimizing the checkout experience, focusing on website performance, and implementing retargeting strategies, your customers will be far more likely to stay engaged and commit to a purchase decision. 

Remember, it's all about the customer. 

Remove unnecessary roadblocks, practice transparency, and aim for continuous optimization. Stay committed to providing an exemplary customer experience — the conversions will follow. 

Looking for a strategy that can lead to immediate results? 

Don't forget — Nostra AI's Edge Delivery Engine takes less than an hour to be activated. 

Minimize cart abandonment today with our industry-leading edge delivery network. Book a demo here to see it in action!