Shopify Cart Abandonment: Strategies To Reduce & Recover Abandoned Carts

Introduction

Abandoned checkouts are a major challenge for any ecommerce store owner. After all, the last thing you want is someone to put a product into a digital shopping cart, then click away for a competitor’s site instead. 

Understanding the core causes of cart abandonment in Shopify  – and solutions you can implement – is key. Let’s take a closer look.

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What Is Shopify Cart Abandonment?

Shopify cart abandonment is any instance where a site visitor or prospective customer puts one or more products into a digital shopping cart, then clicks away from the site or exits their browser entirely prior to completing checkout. They abandon their shopping cart in your digital store.

Many online stores seek to recover abandoned carts  through the use of automated abandoned cart emails. They may also send users push notifications alerting them to the fact that they have left their carts at a checkout page. Discount codes or coupon codes, incentives, and reduced shipping costs are all follow-up methods you can

leverage to reduce shopping cart abandonment at your site.

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What Are the Common Causes of Cart Abandonment in Shopify? 

In many cases, cart abandonment in Shopify is driven by “digital window shoppers.” These people visit your site to browse what you have but aren't committed to making a purchase. This isn't always a bad thing; the more visitors you get to your site, the more long-term purchases you could eventually achieve.

Aside from this, there are four primary causes of the average cart abandonment rate. Let’s look at these common reasons affecting online shoppers.

1. Forced Account Creation

Many websites allow some visitors to create accounts before they can make purchases or even put items in their shopping carts. While this can reduce bots or “too easy” cart additions, it can also frustrate your target audience members and make them less likely to finalize a purchase decision.

To reduce abandoned shopping carts, leverage tools like social media marketing, social proof, SMS marketing, and more to provide the best Shopify experience possible. Enable guest checkout for first-time buyers where possible.

2. Complicated Checkout

A complicated checkout process can also lead to more users abandoning their shopping carts in Shopify. The more steps you add to your checkout process, the lower the likelihood a given customer will finalize their purchase. 

To that end, it’s a good idea to streamline your ecommerce checkout process as much as possible.

3. Unexpected Delivery Fees

Customers hate running into unexpected delivery fees, particularly if a competing organization has free delivery. Thus, it’s no surprise that high and surprising delivery fees are a big driver of cart abandonment.

Not sure whether delivery fees will be a massive issue for your customers? That's where Prismfly’s experimentation and split testing services come in. We’ll gauge the right time and place for you to offer paid or free shipping based on past experience, customer behavior, and other data points.

A/B testing, email campaigns, and integrations with the Shopify app can all improve the customer experience at your ecommerce site.

4. Security Concerns

Customers may further abandon their carts if they encounter security concerns at checkout. If, for instance, you do not have SSL certification for your website, users may be more reluctant to fill in their payment information during checkout. 

Why Is Cart Abandonment a Problem for Retailers?

There are two main reasons why cart abandonment is an issue:

• It represents a lost sale, which is never ideal
• It may temporarily remove one of your products from your inventory count if the user has begun checkout, which could prevent a purchase from being made by another person who wants the same product (at least until the product is removed from the abandoned cart)

Given these issues, it’s important to understand how to minimize cart abandonment rate in your Shopify store. With the right strategies, your abandonment cart recovery program will barely have any work to do!

What Is the Average Cart Abandonment Rate on Shopify?

According to some research, the average cart abandonment rate is:

• 69.75% for desktop shoppers
• 85.65% for mobile shoppers
• 80.74% for tablet shoppers

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7 Strategies To Reduce Shopify Cart Abandonment

Luckily, you can implement several effective strategies to reduce Shopify cart abandonment starting today.

1. Offer Transparent Price Estimates

First, always be upfront and transparent about product prices, including shipping. The earlier customers know how much they will expect to pay for a product, the less likely they are to be negatively surprised at checkout. 

Even if they don’t make a purchase, this could reduce cart abandonment since customers priced out of your products won’t add products to their carts in the first place.

2. Implement a Straightforward Checkout Process

As noted above, making and maintaining a straightforward checkout process is vital. Keep the number of fields and information boxes to a minimum, and make sure checkout takes a handful of minutes at most. Keep extra costs clear and make customer support reachable.

3. Offer Deals To Incentivize Checkout

In some cases, offering special deals or discounts, like limited free shipping after reaching a certain price threshold, might be worthwhile to help convince customers to complete the checkout process. 

Sweetening the proverbial deal could reduce cart abandonment by convincing customers on the fence to go through with purchases.

Just keep in mind that, depending on your niche or industry, this may not fit with your customer base or the luxury products you sell. If you do use exit-intent popups, consider supplementing them with abandoned cart emails to customers on your email list.

4. Ensure Payment Options Are Secure and Flexible

Naturally, your ecommerce website has to have secure, flexible, and comprehensive payment options. You should give your customers many different, secure payment methods, potentially even including cryptocurrency payments to improve their online shopping experience. 

Then, use a secure digital payment system and SSL certification to encrypt and protect customers' personal information.

5. Create Urgency

To help with abandoned cart recovery and boost sales for your Shopify store, try to create a sense of urgency for your customers. 

Again, this is contingent on your industry and customer base, but creating urgency by noting the limited number of products left or hosting a big sale on top-value items could convince customers who put products into their carts to finalize their purchases more often than not.

6. Optimize for Mobile

Over half of all Internet traffic originates from mobile devices, so it only makes sense to optimize your site and shopping experience for mobile users. Many mobile users abandon their carts because the checkout process is confusing or time-consuming. 

Making it easy for people to tap their way through your ecommerce shop and quickly check out on an iPhone or Android device could reduce your mobile shopping cart abandonment rate by a significant margin.

7. Run an Experimentation Program

Don’t forget to experiment with different site optimizations and improvements. With Prismfly as your partner, you can test out different site layouts, checkout experiences, and much more to figure out the optimal arrangement for all your user experience elements. 

Constant experimentation is key to reducing shopping cart abandonment as much as possible.

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What Should You Do Next?

If you still need help to reduce cart abandonment in your Shopify store, contact Prismfly for bespoke optimization solutions today. Our knowledgeable, capable conversion rate optimization experts are also skilled at building and optimizing Shopify ecommerce shops just like yours. In fact, we can build fast and scalable storefronts in no time.

More importantly, we’ll help you implement the above Shopify cart abandonment reduction strategies. Contact us today to get started.