Reducing your ‘abandon basket’ rate

A major challenge for Ecommerce businesses is to reduce their abandon basket rate.  Statistics this year have suggested the average rate of customers abandoning their shopping basket before making a purchase is 81%.  This represents a sizeable chunk of lost revenue and points to a less than positive shopping experience for a large group of customers. What’s more, it represents a group of consumers that have shown a significant interest in that retailer’s products (which means they are the ones most likely to buy). In this article we discuss reducing your abandon basket rate so customers do indeed buy from your site.

Much advice around this subject focuses on ways to reassure the customer of your site’s credibility to buy from.  For example by…

• Demonstrating the security software logos for your site such as Verisign Secure, Norton Secure, MasterCard SecureCode
• Showing a progress indicator to signpost where they are in the buying process for this purchase. Note the simpler it is, the greater the likelihood they’ll complete.
• Being clear up front of the delivery choices and costs
• Making the steps of the purchase simple
• Reassuring them by showing their purchase clearly in their cart – ideally with an image of it

 

What e-retailers often miss

These are all important but equally important is to have a good understanding about:

• your site
• your customer’s experience of it
• your customer’s experience of other promotional campaigns/messaging which have brought them to the site to buy
• those customers that leave an empty basket as they are hoping for an offer to be sent to them before completing the order

There are many software plug-ins on the market to try and reduce abandon baskets but they tend to work in isolation.  A thorough understanding of the broader customer journey is often needed to flag weak spots, which can then be addressed.   For example, a reason for an abandoned basket may in fact to be conflicting marketing messages – such as an offer in an e-shot not carrying through to the basket when the customer tries to buy.

The plug-ins therefore do not typically consider these other factors in the marketing/sales process (and wider online, offline and above the line campaigns) which are impacting on whether a customer buys or not.

So in endeavouring to reduce basket abandon rates, it’s important to have more strategic campaign planning in place.  That means understanding what messages, prompts and calls to actions are being served up pre and during the purchase experience.  These should be seamless and consistent in their meaning if the customer is to trust the seller and become happy to complete the purchase.

 

How Fusion helps

Our WebFusion product is able to capture significant and more meaningful data about the customer’s journey to an ecommerce site including abandon baskets.  Tracking both online and offline sources, we can support the integration of online data into your Single Customer View (SCV) to provide one single source of truth and one point of control. We can then flag key problem areas so these can be finessed and triggers resolved with better targeted messaging and encouragement.

In this respect we have been helping marketers, sales teams and operations have more control over the messaging and prompts customers get as they go through the buying process.  Overall it creates a more relevant, reassuring and rewarding buying experience for customers.

If you are concerned about your abandoned basket rate and want to reduce it, why not contact us.