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January 24, 2024
Guest Writer, Bizrate Insights
There’s nothing more disappointing for an ecommerce business than experiencing online shopper abandonment. And it’s frustrating because there can be so many potential reasons for high abandonment rates.
Keep reading to learn about the four types of online shopper abandonment, why they’re happening, and how to lower them.
Website abandonment is when visitors go to a website and leave without doing the desired action of the website owner. This can occur at any point within the customer journey.
To calculate your website abandonment rate, take the number of visitors who abandoned and divide it by the total number of website visitors. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.
Website Abandonment Rate (%) = [(Number of Visitors Who Abandoned) / (Total Number of Website Visitors)] x 100
While there isn’t any hard data that determines what a good website abandonment rate is, the lower the better! This metric is most helpful when used as a benchmark.
The top three reasons a person will abandon a website are:
Load times are crucial for any ecommerce site — 40% of people will quit a site if it hasn’t loaded after three seconds.
You can use Google PageSpeed Insights to get a better idea of your website’s speed. If you do have slow speeds, here are a few easy ways to improve load times:
First impressions matter, and it’s no different for websites. Around 38% of web designers believe people leave a website due to outdated designs.
You can improve the look of your website by:
No one wants to spend time on a website that’s hard to use, which is why 42% of people surveyed about website design said they “would leave a website because of poor functionality.” To make your website easier to use, you could:
Page abandonment occurs when people arrive on a specific page within a website yet leave before performing a desired action.
Take the number of visitors who abandoned the webpage and divide it by the total number of visitors. Then, multiply that number by 100 to acquire the abandonment rate.
Webpage Abandonment Rate (%) = [(Number of Visitors Who Abandoned) / (Total Number of Webpage Visitors)] x 100
While there isn’t any hard data that determines what a good website abandonment rate is, the lower the better! This metric is most helpful when used as a benchmark.
Visitors may leave a page because it doesn’t meet their expectations, has no value proposition, or is too disorganized.
You can lower webpage abandonment:
Web form abandonment happens when someone starts a form but leaves before finishing it. It’s sadly common — 67% of people abandon a form if they come across any type of complication.
To find your web form abandonment rate, divide the number of visitors who abandoned the form by the total number of visitors. Then, multiply that number by 100 to get the percentage.
Web Form Abandonment Rate (%) = [(Number of Visitors Who Abandoned) / (Total Number of Web from Visitors)] x 100
What a good web form abandonment rate is varies by industry, but 40% is a worthy goal.
There are many reasons why web form abandonment happens, but the main three ones are:
No one wants to spend a lot of time filling out forms. Whether it’s a form with too many pages or full of confusing or redundant questions, you’re going to see a lot of form abandonment.
But there is a way to fix that — by keeping your forms short and simple. Before having a form go live, ask someone you trust to look over the form to ensure it’s easy to understand.
Trust is crucial with web forms because people are concerned about data breaches, which makes people hesitant to share information with ecommerce companies.
Add an SSL certificate to your site to show visitors you can be trusted. You should also display your privacy policy in simple terms on your forms.
Why should someone spend their precious time filling out your form? To keep people from abandoning halfway through, you need to provide a reason for them to finish it. This can be something as simple as a discount.
Shopping cart abandonment is when someone puts products in their cart and then walks away before purchasing.
To calculate shopping cart abandonment rate, take the number of completed purchases and divide it by the total number of carts made. Then, multiply that number by 100 to acquire the percentage.
Cart Abandonment Rate (%) = [(Number of Completed Purchases) / (Total Number of Carts Made)] x 100
The average cart abandonment rate is 70.19%.
There are many reasons a person abandons their cart, but the top three reasons people abandon their cart during checkout are:
Other reasons include:
You can reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate by taking these steps to improve and augment the checkout process:
As an ecommerce business, there are margins to consider — yet there is a way to offer free shipping without losing profits. You can offer free shipping if the person spends a specific amount of money. Not only will this help with margins, but it may encourage customers to buy more because they dislike shipping costs.
You could also focus exclusively on customers who left their cart, and send them a follow-up email with a free shipping promo code. This will limit the amount of free shipping you offer while reducing cart abandonment.
Everyone has preferred payment methods. It’s important to cater to those preferences. Having the most popular payment methods available adds subconscious credibility to your store.
Popular payment methods include:
If someone is buying from you for the first time, they may not be interested in creating an account with you. Adding time to the checkout process by forcing customers to create an account might cause you to lose customers. Consider offering Guest Checkout.
While there are many reasons for various abandonment rates, how will you know the reason(s) your particular customers are leaving? Are your customers more concerned about user experience or how your site looks? Is free shipping more important than payment methods?
Easy customer surveys are a great way to get your customers’ thoughts. Creating a survey with questions about specific aspects of your website will help you refine it for the future and decrease abandonment rates.
We understand the value of learning what customers think about businesses — so we’ve created a platform that allows easy, continuous monitoring. Learn where and why people abandon your site with the Bizrate Insights platform.
If you’re curious about what we can do, contact our team or read a case study about one of our clients who had site abandonment rate problems.
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