Cart abandonment is a problem that all ecommerce sites see to some degree. The rate at which your visitors abandon depends on how effective you have structured the checkout process. Shopping cart abandonment is an important statistic that needs to be tracked as it could mean the difference between a profitable ecommerce store and a potential loss.

According to industry publications, average shopping cart abandonment rates are between 60% – 70%. Put in to sample numbers, if you have 100 people start the checkout process and if 65% abandon it, that’s 65 lost sales. Take that one step further and if your average order value is $49 you lost $3185 in revenue.

To further demonstrate the hit your business just took, not only have you lost revenue but you lost 65 potential new customers as well. This translates to an undeterminable amount of future recurring revenue through repeat orders.

Many factors that contribute to cart abandonment are out of the merchant’s control; however, there are a number of factors you can concentrate on that will help reduce the overall effect on your store.

Here are five methods to decrease your cart abandonment rate.

1. Make sure your cart is working properly and is free of bugs. As elementary as this may sound, it is a vital component that often is not given the weight it deserves. To alleviate this potential problem, go through your order process and ensure it is free of bugs and works as you expect. It would be a good idea to also have others go through and test it periodically — especially after any updates to code or structure have been made that involve the checkout process.
2. Keep your pricing competitive. Customers are also shoppers. They are always searching for and comparing similar product prices. Unless your product is totally 100% unique and not easily duplicated, you must be aware of the price you assign to it. With the increased use in shopping comparison sites by consumers and in light of the current state of the economy, competitive pricing is more critical than ever. If your prices are out of the ballpark your customers won’t stay to watch the game.
3. Decrease the steps in your checkout process. If you can set up your cart with a one-page checkout process, that is ideal. However, if you don’t have that luxury, don’t worry. Tests have shown that shorter checkout processes with more than one page work just fine to convert visitors into sales as long as a few elements are met. A good rule of thumb to follow here is to combine logical steps during the checkout process (shipping and billing address information as an example) and eliminate any extra steps. If you can get your checkout process down to four steps or less you’ll be in much better shape than anything longer.
4. Add process indicators to checkout procedure. These are usually presented at the top of a shopping cart and have categories such as “Billing Information,” “Order Confirmation,” “Place Order,” etc. You don’t want a customer to wonder how much longer it will take to checkout or what part of that checkout process they are in. This is an easy fix. Simply adding process indicators in a graphic format near the top of the checkout process will help keep customers in the checkout until the end.
5. Clearly provide proper customer points of assurance at the right locations. There is one word that makes customers buy: “trust.” Customer points of assurance provide information to the end user that build trust and answer questions. Things like security seals, customer service phone numbers, live chat option and a privacy policy are examples of a few customer points of assurance. These should be displayed and easily seen especially at times when you are asking the customer to act.

Start with these five methods to spruce up your ecommerce business website to decrease your shopping cart abandonment rate, and you should see a reduction in lost sales.