7 reasons why customers are abandoning your mobile shopping cart

Shopping cart abandonment rate has always been a big concern for ecommerce retailers, but the rise of m-commerce has given this crucial metric a whole new dimension. The average shopping cart abandonment rate falls around 68%, but for mobile it is a distressing 97%. Meaning, out of 100 filled carts, only three will turn into sales.

More and more people are browsing products on their smartphones, but the stats clearly tell that they are far less inclined to make final purchase on mobile devices. Shopping cart is one of the major reasons why mobile users of certain sites abandon cart frequently. Mobile traffic on ecommerce websites is increasing gradually but to persuade more buyers to buy, ecommerce retailers must have a UX-perfect shopping cart.

Based on the market research and after learning customers’ experiences, I have pointed out seven mobile shopping cart issues, which are prime reasons of high abandonment rate. Let’s learn what they are and how to fix them.

1. Long Checkout Process

Being more tech-savvy, smartphone users are more likely to buy things online, but they are also the most impatient ones. Asking for information at every step during the checkout process makes them so frustrated that they leave it altogether.

Minimising Checkout Process

Most online stores use ecommerce website templates. By default, their checkout process is not really user & mobile friendly. So, it is important to point out areas that can be improved to make the process more efficient for mobile shoppers. For instance, see if you can club multiple fields, or eliminate a few unnecessary & redundant fields to save some screen space & reduce steps.

2. Poor Design

Shopping cart experience on desktop and mobile are two different things. Pop-ups, promotional stickers, extra information, etc. can work on desktop, but on mobile they are a pain for customers. Apart from that, tiny buttons, pushing multiple fields into one screen, unexpected checkout flow, etc. make a mobile shopping cart less desirable.

Designing for Mobile Shopping Cart

Introducing any kind of distracting or unnecessary element is simply out of question. Besides this, adding more elements affect the page speed. To enhance user experience, you can design checkout process as a wizard that loads at once but asks users to fill only a few fields at a time. You also need to brainstorm over optimally using the limited mobile screen space while putting necessary elements.

3. Bad Loading Speed

Mobile users order from wherever they are. Therefore, low bandwidth can be a major reason why some customers abandon your cart. Only the exceptionally patient users proceed even at low speed, which ultimately results in repeated transaction failures.

Improving Speed of Mobile Shopping Cart

Apparently, it is nobody’s fault if the customer is ordering from a place with poor network coverage. But if you want to save sales despite such issues, you need to proactively speed up your mobile shopping cart. We have already talked about removing unnecessary graphics & other desktop elements.

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Other practices include using HTML & CSS for buttons & other minor graphics, using https instead of http (for mobile site), and removing social widgets.

4. Not Interruption-proof

Phone calls, switching between apps, and other interruptions are part of mobile experience. If your mobile cart can’t handle them, customers won’t prefer your store. Completing the checkout process already feels so tiresome that making a customer go through it again is simply not an option to bet upon.

Provide a Seamless Checkout

Sales that are prone to be slipped out due to unseen interruptions can be saved by making sure that cart remains intact when customers leave it due to any break. To provide a seamless checkout process you must save customers’ shipping & billing address details, and allow them to jump off to payment page from the cart. Further, don’t make them go back to edit details like quantity & address details. Even on desktop it seems like a headache; on mobile it becomes more formidable.

5. Registration Forms

When you throw users a mandatory signup during checkout, they usually think (particularly new ones), ‘I just want to buy this one thing, how much time registration will take?’ This is applicable to desktop checkout as well, but given that mobile users are more impatient, forced signups are a big NO on mobile.

Make Registrations ‘Inviting’, not ‘Forcible’

This applies especially to the case of new (or impatient) customers. In general, it is not a bad practice to ask your customers to register, especially since saving their information will ultimately allow you to offer them a seamless checkout for future transactions.

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But, doing it at the cost of losing an order is not advisable. There should be a registration option, but not mandatory. First or one-time customers should be allowed to purchase things via guest checkout if they want to.

6. Limited Payment Methods

Desktop or mobile, if a shopping cart doesn’t support popular payment gateways, it means the site is digging its own grave. After going through the entire checkout process, if customers find that they simply can’t pay (due to less or undesirable modes of payment), it’s huge let down. Not only sales but customers are also lost this way.

Offering Right Payment Methods

Besides credit & debit card payment, mobile users are also likely to use PayPal, Google wallet, Visa’s V.me, Master Card’s MasterPass, and some other form of digital wallet to complete their online transactions. According to a study, supporting all major and in-trend payment methods increase conversion rate on smartphones by 15%. So make certain that your shopping cart doesn’t miss out on this crucial ingredient.

7. No A/B Testing – No Conversion Improvements

Not running experiments to check what works better for customers might just be another reason why your mobile shopping cart is generating less revenue than its actual potential. Button shape, color, background theme, element placement – basically, every little detail impacts how far a customer will go during checkout.

Improving Conversion Potential

Giving sufficient time to A/B testing as per your target audience’s preference is beneficial in the long-term. Quite often it is considered as a waste of time, but at the end of the day it is testing only that improves the conversion potential. As a matter of fact, ecommerce businesses are increasingly doing A/B testing but the mobile aspect is still somewhat left behind despite being more important. Make sure, you emphasize on mobile, because it’s the future.

For 2015, worldwide abandoned shopping cart value is estimated around US$4.9-trillion, which is almost four times the total revenue generated by ecommerce platforms. That means, on an average a store is generating revenue only 25% of its true potential.

A good part of that shopping cart abandonment is happening on smartphones and tablets. So, this is the call of the hour for all ecommerce retailers to start investing in mobile-focused shopping cart optimization to get more orders.