You invest in marketing, customers choose products, add them to the cart… and then simply disappear? A customer who doesn’t complete the purchase and leaves an abandoned cart is a wasted investment. Every e-shop owner should strive to keep such cases to a minimum. We bring you tips on how to tackle the problem called an abandoned cart in a WooCommerce store.
In today’s article, you’ll learn:
- what an abandoned cart is
- what the average cart abandonment rate is
- what the most common reasons for cart abandonment are
- how to prevent cart abandonment if you run a WooCommerce store
What Is an Abandoned Cart
The term “abandoned cart” is frequently used in e-commerce. It means that a visitor who selected products in your online store and placed them in the shopping cart did not complete the purchase for some reason. This situation occurs quite often and may have various causes, which we will look at below.
Why address abandoned carts? Acquiring visitors and potential customers for your e-shop is not free. Behind every visitor there is effort and/or money invested to bring them to your website. If a customer does not complete a purchase, the invested resources go to waste.
What Is the Typical Cart Abandonment Rate?
Cart abandonment rate is regularly the subject of many studies which (depending on the methodology used) reach different conclusions. For reference, 49 studies from 2012–2023 report a range of 55–85% cart abandonment. The most recent study from 2023* states that the cart abandonment rate is 79.53%.
These figures are far from negligible. However, as a WooCommerce store owner, you have options to influence the number of abandoned orders directly on your website.
Reasons for Cart Abandonment
To reduce the cart abandonment rate in your WooCommerce store, you first need to understand why customers do not complete their orders. What are the most common causes of abandoned carts?
High Shipping and Payment Costs
47% of participants in a cart abandonment study* state that high shipping and payment costs discourage them from making a purchase. If a customer learns the shipping cost only during the checkout process, the unexpected extra expense may deter them and they will not complete the order.
Registration Required to Purchase
Creating a customer account brings benefits to both the buyer and the store – such customers are easier to contact again and encourage to make another purchase. However, be careful! If you make account creation mandatory for completing a purchase, you will likely discourage some customers. Up to 25% of customers may abandon their cart if you do not offer the option to purchase without creating a user account.
Long Delivery Time
Customers often shop impulsively – they need something, so they buy it. If you do not inform customers about non-standard delivery times in advance, but only during the checkout process, you may create an unpleasant surprise and the cart abandonment rate will increase.
Long and Complicated Checkout Process
An overly complicated checkout flow leading to final payment will also discourage customers. Smartphone users in particular are constantly distracted by notifications, making it easy for them to abandon a lengthy and complex checkout process before completing the payment.
Unsuitable Payment and Shipping Options
Some customers abandon their shopping carts because the store does not offer their preferred shipping or payment method. A limited or, from the customer’s perspective, unsuitable selection of shipping and payment methods discourages up to 11% of customers.
Slow Website Loading
The nightmare of every online store – slow loading speed – is the last factor on our list. We live in a fast-paced world, and a slow website frustrates customers to the point that they prefer to abandon the cart and place the order elsewhere. Customers are also discouraged if they frequently encounter a 404 error page while browsing your store.
How to Solve the Abandoned Cart Issue in WooCommerce
We have listed the most significant factors leading to cart abandonment. What can we do, specifically in WooCommerce, to reduce the cart abandonment rate to a minimum?
Inform Customers About Extra Fees in Advance
Inform customers in time about the cost of shipping and payment for the selected product. Not only to prevent unpleasant surprises at checkout. The obligation to inform customers about shipping and payment options and costs before the payment process is also required by consumer protection law. We covered e-shop obligations in detail in the article – E-shop Obligations: Do You Know What Information You Must Provide for Sold Products?
TIP: Automatically display available shipping methods and their prices directly on the product page using the Toret Toolkit plugin. Customers will see the shipping cost before adding the product to the cart.
Scale Shipping Costs
You can avoid cart abandonment due to high fees by scaling shipping costs. It is hard to convince a customer to buy if the shipping costs as much as the product itself. WooCommerce shipping plugins can help you set shipping prices, for example, based on weight or package dimensions.
Allow Guest Checkout
As mentioned above, creating a customer account is beneficial for the store, but it may discourage customers. Therefore, give customers a choice at checkout and allow purchases without creating an account. Customers who want to shop quickly will appreciate it and, if satisfied, may register during a future purchase.
Speed Up the Checkout Process
Closely related to the previous point is checkout speed. If you reduce the number of actions required to complete payment to a minimum, you will speed up the checkout process and increase the percentage of completed orders. Avoid unnecessary clicks or steps. You will see the completion rate improve.
TIP: Did you know that in our shipping plugins you can enable automatic opening of the pickup point map widget? This saves customers one of many clicks during checkout.
An inline payment gateway can also streamline the checkout process. With it, customers can pay directly in a pop-up window within your store, without being redirected to the payment gateway’s website. With the GoPay Inline plugin, you can have an inline payment gateway in your WooCommerce store.
Use Email Reminders
Sometimes customers are interrupted during checkout and leave the cart even though they intended to buy. If such a customer is logged into their account, you can (and should) send them an email reminder about the incomplete order. The success rate of such emails is surprisingly high. We discussed this in more detail in our article on email marketing.
Offer More Payment and Shipping Options
Shipping and payment options are constantly expanding. To maximize completed orders, you need to keep up with trends and offer customers a sufficient range of options.
The most popular payment methods available for WooCommerce stores include:
- card payment
- bank button payment
- digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.)
- buy now, pay later and installment payments
These payment options can be provided through a suitable payment gateway integrated with your store via WooCommerce payment gateway plugins. With a single payment gateway integration, you can offer multiple payment methods.
TIP: Want to know how to connect a payment gateway to your WooCommerce store? Read the article WooCommerce Payment Gateway: What Plugin Do You Need and How to Connect It?
Do not forget to offer older but still popular payment methods available in WooCommerce, such as bank transfer or cash on delivery. This way, you accommodate customers who cannot or do not want to use a payment gateway.
Optimize Your Website
A fast and functional online store is essential if you want to increase completed orders. Check your website’s loading speed, for example using the free Google PageSpeed Insights tool, which evaluates performance. Fast-loading pages not only improve customer satisfaction, but also enhance your search engine ranking.
If a customer clicks on a broken link, they will see a 404 page. Ensure such links are minimized so customers are not annoyed by recurring error messages. You can also improve your 404 page with creative or humorous content.
Set Up Remarketing
Even a customer who did not complete the order and was not logged in is not permanently lost. You can still reach them through remarketing. In advertising systems such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, or Sklik, you can set up ads specifically targeting customers who abandoned their shopping cart. This way, you remind them of your store and some of them may return to complete their order.
The Problem of Abandoned Carts Can Be Solved
Acquiring new customers is not free, so it is in every e-shop’s interest to ensure that as many of them as possible complete their orders. To reduce cart abandonment, you need to optimize your store’s functionality, checkout process, and the information provided before customers add products to their cart.
If cart abandonment still occurs, you can recover some orders using email reminders about abandoned carts or through remarketing campaigns on advertising platforms.
*Data from the SalesCycle 2023 study (Baynard Institute)