Three Simple Ways to Reduce Cart Abandonment

Online cart abandonment is one of the biggest problems plaguing eCommerce merchants, with up to 80% of all carts ditched by users before payment can be processed. The amount of money lost to cart abandonment each year is staggering, so it isn’t surprising that most merchants are constantly looking for ways to see their customers all the way through to order competition. The following are three simple but highly effective tips that online merchants can use to minimize cart abandonment and reduce the significant impact it can have on the bottom line. 

1) Offer Expedited Guest Checkout

There is nothing shoppers find more annoying than being forced to log in, or worse, create a new account to make a purchase. It’s always a good idea to offer the option of logged-in transactions because it offers an additional level of protection to the buyer and extra data to the seller, but it should never be mandatory. Offering an expedited guest checkout that users can use to get to their carts in as little as a single click as an absolute necessity because as many as 34% of consumers say they’ve abandoned a cart due to forced account creation. Luckily, most eCommerce platforms understand how important express checkout is, and it can generally be enabled easily or added with a simple plugin on platforms not offering it as a native feature. 

2) Make it Convenient to Pay

Our modern, digital world is all about convenience, which means making it convenient to check out isn’t enough – it also has to be convenient to pay. That means giving consumers the payment options they want because a customer who can’t pay through their preferred method is a huge flight risk. Accepting major credit cards is obviously an absolute minimum, and PayPal has been around so long that it’s generally a bad idea not to at least offer it (despite high fees.) But today, there is a whole host of digital wallets and online payment options available that many consumers prefer over traditional payment methods. Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay, for instance, are all important payment avenues today due to the near-complete penetration of mobile devices in the online shopping space. Regardless of what payments a merchant chooses to offer, the key point is that the more options a consumer has, the less likely it is that a customer will abandon their cart. 

3) Use Automation Where Possible to Protect Order Integrity

Fraud is a huge problem, and while it’s important to try and put the kibosh on as many fraudulent transactions as possible, killing a legitimate transaction in the name of caution is a surefire way to lose a customer for life. For that reason, it’s a good idea for merchants to utilize advanced automation and artificial intelligence where possible to ensure that fraud gets caught, but legitimate transactions are never held up unnecessarily. Luckily, putting AI and automation to work is a lot easier than it sounds. There are a number of services currently available to help monitor transactions, and risk scoring systems, like the one offered by Signifyd, are among the best choices.

Certain payment processors also offer advanced fraud protection to help automate the evaluation of transactions. BAMS, for instance, offers a complete set of fraud and chargeback defense tools, including full integration with Signifyd’s advanced risk scoring tool. For more information on how BAMS can help you mitigate fraud and minimize cart abandonment, get in touch with a member of the team or schedule a complete five-step price comparison today.