E-Commerce Shopping Cart Statistics To Improve Your Online Conversion Rate
These E-commerce shopping cart statistics are essential to conversions, influential to store owners and easy to implement right now.
If you’re the owner of an e-commerce site, you probably know the importance of maintaining a low shopping cart abandonment rate. Just because a shopper adds a product to his or her cart doesn’t necessarily mean they will buy it. Many shoppers abandon their carts without following through with the purchase. Well, we’ve compiled a list of several important statistics associated with e-commerce shopping carts.
Using these E-commerce shopping cart statistics can help you optimize your site for a higher conversion rate.
1. 26% of Shoppers Abandon When Presented with Unexpected Shipping Costs
There are dozens of reasons to buy a product online as opposed to in person. The one benefit associated with buying a product in person, however, is the simple fact that it doesn’t require shipping.
According to the eCommerce Survey 2014, 28% of online shoppers will abandon their cart when presented with unexpected shipping costs.
There’s nothing wrong with charging shoppers for shipping, but you should use transparent and upfront pricing.
2. Abandonment Typically Occurs on Tuesday
According to a study of more than 1 billion abandoned shopping carts, consumers are most likely to abandon their cart on Tuesday.
So, which day of the week has the fewest abandoned carts?
The study cites Saturday between 8 and 9 PM as having the fewest abandoned carts. Furthermore, abandonment rates are lower during the holiday, as consumers often rush to buy those last-minute gifts.
3. Forced Account Registration Kills 23% of Conversions
The same eCommerce Survey 2014 study mentioned above found that 23% of online consumers will abandon their shopping cart if they are forced to register an account.
Rather than forcing shoppers to register an account, make it optional. Shoppers should have the choice to buy a product as either a guest or registered user.
4. Remarketing for the Win
Shopping cart abandonment is one of the most disappointing metrics to look at, but savvy sellers use remarketing to win over these customers and improve ROI. Remarketing is essentially using email to re-engage customers or potential customers.
Why is remarketing important to your online business?
About three in four shoppers who abandoned shopping carts say they plan to return to the retailer’s website or store to make a purchase, according to data from SeeWhy; 8 percent actually do; that leaves 67 percent of abandoners as ready remarketing targets.
5. Discounts Can Turn Abandoned Carts Back Around
Discounts are a very typical and effective form of remarketing. You can often convince a consumer to go back into his or her abandoned cart to buy the product by offering a discount.
One study found that 54% of online shoppers will purchase products left in their carts if those products are offered at a discount price.
Amazon sellers are known for using this tactic, many of whom will lower the price of products left in shoppers’ carts.
6. Retargeting to Improve ROI
Retargeting is similar to remarketing in that you are directly targeting visitors who have shown interest on your site. Specifically, retargeting is tracking customers through cookies on your site to serve up tailored ads on other sites they visit. I’m sure you’ve experienced these types of ads following you around online.
Nearly three out of five U.S. online buyers said they notice ads for products they looked up on other sites.
Web site visitors who are retargeted with display ads are 70 percent more likely to convert on your Web site.
7. Make Your Customers the First Priority
Adding product reviews to your online store can increase ecommerce conversion rate by 14-76% (Internet Retailer)
90% of consumers read less than 10 reviews before forming an opinion about a business (Bright Local)
88% of consumers trust reviews as much as personal recommendations (Bright Local)
55% of shoppers say that online reviews influence their buying decision. Not only do customer ratings influence buyer decision making they affect whether or not your products will even get displayed to potential buyers on shopping channels like Amazon.
One study showed that while star rating seemed to vary from one ranked listing to the next, 87% of all top twelve results on Amazon have AT LEAST a 4 star rating. And 92% have at least 4 stars showing.
8. Retail has Lowest Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates
Salecycle reports that retail has the lowest shopping cart abandonment rates, while travel and finance has the highest rates. This is presumably due to the fact that returns are easier with retail e-commerce sites, whereas making a return on a travel or finance-related purchase could be quite difficult.
Summary:
We can’t control everything; however each of the points listed above, store owners can easily implement to improve sales and conversion for their online store. These eCommerce shopping cart statistics speak for themselves — Get to work if you haven’t already started implementing these tactics.
