If you’re an online shopping cart software vendor, there’s a goldmine right under your house. One way you can increase online sales is to decrease shopping cart abandonment rate. According to PayPal 88% of visitors abandoned their shopping cart last year. Each of these carts was worth $109, or in a macro level, they add up to about $4 Trillion worldwide.
In the infographic we designed to illustrate our point, we list several methods that will let you improve trust in your shopping cart software based on numerous studies gathered from various industry resources. Earning shoppers’ trust finding the right ways to increase online sales is not guesswork; rather, it’s replete with statistical truths (such as using trust seals) that can be turned into a successful customer acquisition strategy that will increase sellers’ chances of sales conversion.
CHECK THE INFOGRAPHIC BELOW FOR MORE INSIGHTS ON TRUST ISSUES IN ONLINE SALES:
Imagine if the best shopping cart software vendors could reduce the cart abandonment rate by just 10%: that’s $400 Billion! But let’s not imagine it, BI Intelligence, the research arm of Business Insider, said that as much as 63% of abandoned carts can be recovered with the right tactics. Sending an email three hours after a shopper abandons a cart can help, according to Listrak. But overall, it boils down to how much your visitors trust your site.
Consider these facts if you’re a seller:
- Do you have at least 10 positive reviews across your digital presence? One study says 85% of shoppers read up to 10 reviews before they trust a business.
- If you can’t get a 5 or 4 star-rating, at least strive to get 3 stars. That’s because there’s a deep chasm between 2 and 3 stars; apparently, customers draw the line at 3 stars when trusting a business.
- Shoppers go for perceived security rather than actual technical encryption. In a survey by Baymard.com, an independent web usability consultancy, three popular trust seals outscored SSL seals by more than 50% except for Norton, which, ironically, scored the highest rating. It’s likely a brand trust that makes shoppers feel safe.
Now for U.S. sellers, shopping cart abandonment has an evil cousin: competition abroad. PayPal said local shops lost $40.6 Billion last year to overseas sites. You’d think China is the top culprit, but you’ll be surprised where real competition is coming from.
We also included a glaring fact that online sites with shabby customer service should take heed: 56% of shoppers will tell other people about their bad experience with a business. That’s more than half of your shoppers becoming a serious liability.
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Ah, the perennial problem of online sellers. Sometimes it's not about trust, many potential buyers aren't buyers at all. They're prolly bored at work or home and window shoping for something they'll buy on Christmas. We sell seasonal apparel from other countries and we have something like 60% shopping cart abandonment stat. I've given up pulling this down and instead focus my attention on reselling the 40%. It works beautifully! We've posted an average 150% sales on month over month for 4 rows now.
These are all about managing your reputation. If this still fails, you can also manage shopping cart abandonment through marketing. As long as your abandonment rate isn't ballooning, one way to make up for lost sales is to increase your leads. Maybe your opt-in has long stagnated, it's time to create a new free asset and invite people to subscribe. Besides, not all shoppers abandon cart forever; some of them, maybe, many of them, would return come payday.
Nice reference material. We've known all of these for long, but it helps to be reminded. I also think the shopping cart abandonment rate is a fixed characteristic of online shopping, much like direct response rate ranges from 1%-3%. You can improve it to as much as 50% maybe, but however tactics you use, people by nature will abandon carts by about that percentage, between 50-60%.
You should have added social media. A site with social media networks makes it more engaging and it's one of the best ways to put a face to your shop, especially if you're a small business. Users can actually talk to the owner herself or maybe one of the managers. Now that's transparency.
If you can't get a trust seal, at the least give your contact details. That alone tells your visitors you're real and they can get back at you if your service sucks. You'll be surprised the big difference it makes versus having a trust seal or professionally designed site without a contact information.
Be wary of B2B sites that are ugly, especially those in the trading industry. Many of these sites don't do justice to the professional service they deliver. I suspect these companies just don't have time to manage their online presence, kinda old school who ply their trade using their good old network. Just the same, contact them and you'll be surprised they're not rubbish at all. Conversely, just because the site looks neat and clean means it's legitimate.
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