Slow Sites and Extra Fees Responsible for Majority of Shopping Cart Abandonment (INFOGRAPHIC)

A major concern of many ecommerce business owners is shopping cart abandonment. That’s when a customer puts an item in an online shopping cart and never completes a transaction. Fullestop, a web design and development company, conducted research into the reasons that contribute to this problem and found slow sites and extra fees are responsible for the majority of shopping cart abandonment.

Shopping Cart Abandonment Reasons

According to Fullestop’s research, approximately $4 trillion worth of ecommerce merchandise is abandoned in the shopping cart every year. The first quarter of 2017 saw global shopping cart abandonment rate reach 75.6 percent, down 1.2 percent from the previous quarter.

More than half (52.3 percent) of shopping cart abandonments in 2017 happen on mobile devices.

Overall, slow websites accounted for 75 percent of all shopping cart abandonment between 2012 and 2017. Extra costs such as shipping and tax costs accounted for 61 percent of abandoned shopping carts, while compulsory requirement to create an account was responsible for 35 percent of abandoned carts.

Other reasons for high shopping cart abandonment include complicated checkout process (27 percent), problem calculating total order costs (24 percent), and website crushing (22 percent). Fortunately, of the $4 trillion yearly worth of abandoned merchandise, 63 percent can apparently be easily recovered.

Ways to Combat Abandoned Shopping Carts

Fullestop says offering free shipping is the biggest incentive to encourage customers to shop from you. Eliminating surprise costs is another key way to combat abandoned carts and encourage customers to complete orders on your ecommerce website. Preventing website errors by having a team monitor the site is yet another measure Fullestop says can lower shopping cart abandonment on your website.

Check out Fullestop’s handy infographic below for more information on shopping cart abandonment reasons, and what you should and shouldn’t do to combat them:

Images: Fullestop

This article, "Slow Sites and Extra Fees Responsible for Majority of Shopping Cart Abandonment (INFOGRAPHIC)" was first published on Small Business Trends