High Cart Abandonment Rate

5 replies
Hi fellow Warriors-

After several years of working offline I set up shop online selling physical products and I'm experiencing extremely high cart abandonment rate (> 90%).

I am using adwords to get my customers and so far my results have been thus in the last 2 weeks:

Total visitors: 400
Carts created: 110
Checkout: 8

I am using 1shoppingcart for my cart. Is 2% conversion the best I can hope for Adwords? I've not used it lately but several years ago I used to get 8-10% conversion from adwords traffic.

Any suggestion is welcome.
#abandonment #cart #high #rate
  • Profile picture of the author richblogs
    Originally Posted by dbhatta View Post

    Hi fellow Warriors-

    After several years of working offline I set up shop online selling physical products and I'm experiencing extremely high cart abandonment rate (> 90%).

    I am using adwords to get my customers and so far my results have been thus in the last 2 weeks:

    Total visitors: 400
    Carts created: 110
    Checkout: 8

    I am using 1shoppingcart for my cart. Is 2% conversion the best I can hope for Adwords? I've not used it lately but several years ago I used to get 8-10% conversion from adwords traffic.

    Any suggestion is welcome.
    You're confusing several things here. Adwords traffic is not necessarily the reason for abandonment. It may well be your shopping experience.

    I have no idea if that's a typical abandonment rate. Maybe you had a better shopping experience in the past, maybe the sort of product you were selling had more focused buyers...

    There are loads of influences here and I really don't think you're going to get a useful answer. Just make sure the shopping experience is as good as it can be.
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  • Profile picture of the author rooze
    The general rate for shopping cart abandonment is somewhere around 70-80% depending on where you get the data....the point is it's high.
    The main reason it looks so high is that many carts can be triggered by bots. They go looking for <form> tag and the result is that certain types of carts show a higher than 'real' rate of abandonment. You should check with your cart provider to see if their software is susceptible in this way.

    Then, there are the legitimate reasons for cart abandonment. These are primarily -
    1 - People are comparison shopping and include shipping rates in the process. So they'll add stuff to the cart and take it through to the point where the shipping is displayed before dumping it.
    2 - Perceived security at the payment stage. Many people just don't feel comfortable whipping out a credit card when they arrive at that stage. It's a combination of many factors - your use of SSL, ramming home the notion that your site is secure by the use of padlock images and other such media, having clear privacy policies etc

    The best way to setup your cart is to mimic what other reputable sites are doing. Don't copy big sites like Amazon, since their security is expected and isn't under such close scrutiny. Look at a few sites in your niche where you know they're getting good sales - authority sites basically.
    There are some good reports around which you can find on Google, they'll take you through step-by-step what you can do to get the most out of your cart.
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    • First, I'd test your user experience. Post the URL here and have a bunch of Warriors try your site.

      Then I'd broaden the scope and look at traffic quality.

      I'm not familiar with your particular cart but most have some sort of cart-closer add-on to help reduce abandonment.

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    • Profile picture of the author Michael Fereday
      Originally Posted by rooze View Post

      The general rate for shopping cart abandonment is somewhere around 70-80% depending on where you get the data....the point is it's high.
      The main reason it looks so high is that many carts can be triggered by bots. They go looking for <form> tag and the result is that certain types of carts show a higher than 'real' rate of abandonment. You should check with your cart provider to see if their software is susceptible in this way.

      Then, there are the legitimate reasons for cart abandonment. These are primarily -
      1 - People are comparison shopping and include shipping rates in the process. So they'll add stuff to the cart and take it through to the point where the shipping is displayed before dumping it.
      2 - Perceived security at the payment stage. Many people just don't feel comfortable whipping out a credit card when they arrive at that stage. It's a combination of many factors - your use of SSL, ramming home the notion that your site is secure by the use of padlock images and other such media, having clear privacy policies etc

      The best way to setup your cart is to mimic what other reputable sites are doing. Don't copy big sites like Amazon, since their security is expected and isn't under such close scrutiny. Look at a few sites in your niche where you know they're getting good sales - authority sites basically.
      There are some good reports around which you can find on Google, they'll take you through step-by-step what you can do to get the most out of your cart.
      Solid, helpful advice that will help me a lot - thanks.
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  • Profile picture of the author marketingva
    I've often abandoned carts when the shipping costs were revealed and I thought they were too high.

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