6 Easy Steps for Reducing Cart Abandonment

Brian Deignan
Brian Deignan
August 16th, 2017
Estimated read time: 3 minutes, 32 seconds

Are online shoppers abandoning your shopping cart instead of buying? If so, you’re not alone. Research by Baynard Institute, incorporating 21 different studies over 8 years, shows that over 65% of online shoppers who start to make a purchase will ultimately abandon their cart.

If you sell software online, there are trusted strategies for decreasing your shopping cart abandonment rate. Here’s how to convert your prospects from order page visitors to new customers – and start earning more revenue.

Reassure your prospects with images

Think that you don’t need a representative image of your software? Think again. Images – even when you’re selling software online – are crucial. VoucherCloud found that 92% of people identified ‘visuals’ as being a top influencing factor that affected their purchase decision. Additionally, multiple images of a product increased sales by 58%.

Why? Well, images are comforting; they give potential buyers a better understanding of what they’re about to buy. If you’ve created beautiful and responsive software, show it off with colorful images! Software used to call for a “box shot”; now it calls for brilliant eye-catching icons.

Close the deal with videos

It may be easy for your existing customers to use your desktop software or SaaS offering, but you want to make sure your prospective customers recognize and understand this, too. According to Kissmetrics, a short video tutorial or demonstration can help reduce cart abandonment rates.

Not only will the video decrease cart abandonment, but it will encourage more users to put the product in their cart in the first place. Shoppers are 144% more likely to pick up the product and place it into their cart after viewing a product video. Product videos, especially those that are short, fun, even ironic, and include catchy music (which viewers can turn off easily if desired) will help seal the deal.

Anticipate last minute questions

Don’t lose sales because your prospects have “one more question,” but no idea how to reach you. 83% of customers say that they require some level of support during the purchasing process; failure to offer that can result in them walking away from the product for good.

MarketingExperiments found that displaying your contact information at checkout is a smart way to minimize cart abandonment. Additionally, prominently display a link back to your site’s FAQs— this could answer the prospect’s questions and give them a better picture of everything you have to offer.

Make your checkout process simple

Time is money. Research shows that the less time it takes to complete the checkout process, the higher the conversion rate. Additionally, having a progress indicator during checkout helps people visually see where they are in the checkout process.

However, be sure that this indicator is as simple as possible. If you’ve got twelve steps in the checkout process, regardless of how long they take, customers will drop out because it looks like too much work.

Just say no to registration

According to research by Convince & Convert, a staggering 86% of people leave a website when asked to create a new account. That’s not to say you shouldn’t have users create an account. However, people new to the site find it invasive when they’re required to offer up so much information before they can finalize their purchase.

Instead, offer new customers a guest checkout option. Established users can log in to enjoy the conveniences related to their existing account and you can always prompt people to register with your site after the purchase is complete.

Provide peace-of-mind with “trust logos”

Cybercrime is on the rise. Last year, there were 38% more cybercrime incidents than the year before, and it doesn’t look like the number will be decreasing anytime soon. Even trusted organizations suffer data breaches— it’s more important than ever to reassure customers that you take their security seriously.

Research shows that 80% of consumers feel safer seeing trustworthy credit card logos prominently displayed throughout the website. By including those logos at checkout, you can help minimize your cart abandonment.

Cart abandonment happens to every business. But if you apply these 6 simple steps to decreasing your abandonment rate, you’ll start converting more of your browsers into buyers and further boost your revenue.

Click here to download our guide for more useful tips about selling your product online.

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