Slipping Sales: Six Steps to Fix your Cart and Reduce Abandonment

All eCommerce websites suffer from cart abandonment (when customers leave a website before completing their purchase), but no market segment suffers as much as apparel and accessories eCommerce sites. Online clothing & accessories sellers find their carts abandoned at an average rate of 40%—more than the rate of home, tech, and the fitness industry combined. 

We covered how to master the art of the cart abandonment email in a previous blog, but it’s important to identify why customers are abandoning their carts in the first place. Start by analyzing your web store’s checkout process, and ask shoppers why they abandoned their cart via a survey. You should also look closely at your social media comments and online reviews for valuable feedback.

There are a number of things you can do to get your customers to complete their transactions the first time they visit your web store. In this blog, you’ll learn how to minimize cart abandonment on your fashion eCommerce website and increase sales.

Don’t Have Too Many Steps to Checkout

In a study by Statista, 21% of shoppers abandoned their carts because the process took too long. With that in mind, one of your first orders of business should be ensuring your checkout process is quick and easy. One-step checkout is standard these days, and unless your web store is members only, you should always allow guest checkout. Use address auto-suggest and auto-completion to make it faster and easier for customers to input their details. Your forms should have large fields to ensure they’re mobile-friendly and specify the input format so that the proper keyboard appears on mobile when users tap into a field. More than half of shoppers make purchases using mobile devices, so it’s crucial that your web store is mobile-friendly.

Minimize Surprise Costs

Fifty-six percent of consumers surveyed by Statista abandoned their carts due to extra costs such as shipping or taxes, so it’s important to do whatever you can to avoid surprising your customers with fees later in the checkout process. Be transparent about costs and make it clear whether shipping or taxes are included in the price on the product page. If you offer free shipping, this should be communicated on all pages of your website. If you don’t offer free shipping, consider adding a shipping calculator before checkout, to allow shoppers to estimate costs early on. If you sell internationally, you should also make a note early in the checkout process that the customer may be liable for import duties and taxes. You could link to your FAQ page to provide further information about that, if appropriate.

Be Unpredictable With Your Deals

Cart abandonment is such a big concern that most online retailers now send discounts via email afterwards, to try and win back the customer. But savvy shoppers have become so accustomed to getting these deals that they’ll often deliberately delay their purchase in order to wait for the discount to be sent to them. Be mindful of not offering your deals too soon, or too often. Switch up the timing and value of your cart abandonment email offers so that you don’t do yourself a disservice.

Make Your Return Policy Clear

Online shopping is now the norm, but it can still feel risky to many. “Will it fit me?” “Will I like the fabric or color?” “What if it’s not what I’m expecting?” These are just some of the questions that come into shoppers’ heads. Give them peace of mind through your return policy. Communicate it clearly and often on your web store, and if you can, offer free returns. Whatever your return policy is, make sure it’s prominently displayed, easy to find and simple to understand and execute.

Have a Fast-loading Website

If your website is slow to load, shoppers may lose patience or lose trust that it’s stable and reliable. Either reaction could cost you the sale and see your shopper abandon their cart. Statista found that 17% of shoppers who abandoned their carts were concerned about security. Secure pages such as checkout pages are usually not cacheable, so try to ensure yours load quickly. Avoid third-party scripts and ensure shipping methods and payment forms load quickly. Also, add trust logos of all of your payment options and have a valid SSL certificate to increase faith that your website—and their data—is secure.

Provide a Variety of Delivery and Payment Options

Online shoppers have come to expect a range of options when it comes to delivery and payment. For some shoppers, when it comes to delivery, speed is more important than price, so offer a range of options to meet their needs. Your web store should also provide the option for express checkout using PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay (along with standard credit card providers). A number of studies have found that younger shoppers don’t use credit cards, instead preferring “buy now, pay later” services such as Afterpay and Klarna. Enabling these options on your web store will open you up to a bigger audience and help you prevent cart abandonment.

Recover Lost Customers Via Facebook Remarketing

You can’t completely stop customers from leaving your website without making a purchase, but you can create special ads that target them and help you win them back. Facebook remarketing adds a tracking pixel to your website that allows you to capture visitor behavior and attach a cookie to each visitor. This information can be used to create custom Facebook ads that target visitors who leave your site without making a purchase. Highlight products that the individual viewed but didn’t buy, and consider offering a special discount to entice them to come back to your site and purchase.

Win Over Wary Shoppers With Social Proof

One of the most effective ways you can win over unsure shoppers is to show them proof of your other happy customers. This can come in the form of product reviews, testimonials, and third-party applications like Fomo, which alert shoppers when other people make a purchase on your website. Install capabilities on either your product pages or a dedicated reviews or testimonials page of your website so that your customers can share their thoughts, and be sure to ask them for feedback via email and social media.

These are just some of the ways you can avoid cart abandonment on your fashion eCommerce website. Talk to a member of our team to put these and more strategies in place on your web store.