Katapult's technology partner, JetRails, provided insight into reducing cart abandonment rates with Adobe's Magento. Take a look at what they have to say.

Attracting shoppers to your eCommerce store is no easy task. It’s crucial that consumers encounter flexibility and efficiency when checking out. Even with an advanced eCommerce platform like Adobe’s Magento, there are lots of opportunities to optimize your store to decrease cart and checkout abandonment. We’ve highlighted a dozen areas that can positively impact your Magento cart abandonment rate.

1) Speed
Your entire website should be optimized for fast loading speeds. If shoppers load their cart and your site lags while they attempt to proceed through the checkout process, it certainly will not help you seal the deal. It’s as if your sales clerk is staring at the customer and not ringing up their order.

Solutions:
There are lots of tools that can help you identify what’s slowing down your checkout to improve your Magento loading speeds. Whether your site needs better hosting, additional caching, or just some fine-tuning, it’s important that you address any speed issues.

2) Reliability + Scalability
Shoppers expect consistency. If your Magento store can’t handle traffic spikes, such as during the holiday shopping season, you can lose out on a lot of sales. Similarly, if certain Magento extensions or processes are temporarily causing shoppers to experience latency or errors, many will abandon your website before they finish checking out.

Solutions:
Have a hosting team that provides 24/7 monitoring, so that if there is an issue you’re not up a creek without a paddle. Be sure to have them load test your site after you’ve made significant changes. This will ensure that your store is still ready for traffic surges and spikes after the changes are in place.

3) Checkout Optimization
If it’s not easy to checkout from a mobile device or if there are other roadblocks slowing down shoppers you need to consider the ramifications. Shoppers expect your site to be mobile-friendly with a streamlined checkout process.

Solutions:
Consider using a Magento one-step checkout extension. There are many to choose between, including from Magento extension developers like AheadWorks, Amasty, and the aptly named OneStepCheckout. Simple improvements can help customers quickly checkout before they get distracted or frustrated and leave. Improvements like opening up a numeric keypad for users typing in their phone number on mobile devices, or autofilling shipping and billing address information.

4) Trust
For shoppers that haven’t purchased from your brand in the past, it’s one thing to add to cart, but actually checking out is an entirely different matter. Shoppers absolutely expect your entire store to load securely via HTTPS, and even that’s not enough for some buyers to complete a transaction.

Solutions:
Consider adding trust symbols to your store that will resonate with your audience. Depending on the demographics of your shoppers, perhaps a trust badge from the BBB, Google Verified Reviews, McAfee, Sitelock, or TrustGuard will put them at ease. Maybe a shopping guarantee from a 3rd party like Norton will ensure the shoppers against identity theft. Test adding trust symbols to different parts of your website, such as the cart and checkout pages to see how they impact your cart abandonment rate.

5) False Declines
You know those systems that are trying to protect you from fraudsters using stolen credit cards? Well, a lot of the default fraud prevention solutions are known to block perfectly good orders. Some shoppers may call you for assistance, but many will simply get frustrated and move on.

Solutions:
Consider integrating a better credit card fraud solution that’s likely to allow more good transactions while blocking the bad orders from being fulfilled. Companies like ClearSale, NoFraud, and Signifyd offer such solutions.

6) Return Policies
Once shoppers have added items to their cart, they’ll often search for information like your returns policy. If it’s not easily accessible or if it isn’t competitive with the policies of other sellers, those shoppers may not want to continue with their purchase.

Solutions:
Have a fair returns policy that’s easy to find on your website. If you have a particularly customer-friendly returns policy, consider making it stand out more clearly on your website with strategically placed banners or other callouts. You can also consider integrating a system like RichPanel to help shoppers get answers to their shipping, returns, and other questions more intuitively.

7) Payment Options
We often take for granted that not everyone wants to pay the same way. If your website only accepts basic credit and debit cards with no other payment options, you may very well be leaving money on the table.

Solutions:
Think more comprehensively about how you can support your shoppers:

If they’re wanting big-ticket items with no long-term commitment and multiple paths to ownership, perhaps they’ll want a lease-to-own solution like Katapult.

If they’re B2B buyers, maybe they’ll want a financing solution like Apruve or an option to pay directly from their bank account, like Paystand.

If they’re likely to be sitting on a lot of cryptocurrencies, perhaps it’s best to have an option like BitPay for shoppers to leverage.
If your shoppers may want to use a credit card that they’ve already saved securely with a trusted 3rd party, Amazon Pay or PayPal could be a great addition.

As you deploy new solutions, be sure to test and measure to identify which additions are having the best impacts on your business.

8) Shipping
Do your shipping prices drive away customers? Are deliveries fast enough to compete in today’s market? Do you have good freight options for oversized items? How about good international delivery options? Does your website provide accurate delivery timelines during the shopping process? Is it easy to arrange for in-store or curbside pickup? If you’ve answered “no” to one of these questions, you’re inevitably causing shoppers to abandon ship (pun intended).

Solutions:
There’s no shortage of vendors that can help enhance your shipping options. That includes companies like:
ShipperHQ, WeSupplyLabs, and FenixCommerce can improve the shipping information and choices that are presented to your shoppers.

Kuehne + Nagel’s LTL freight service, which includes a wide range of delivery vendors for bulky and overweight items.

EasyShip and GlobalShopex for international shipping options.
RubyHas, ShipBob, and ShipMonk for distributed warehousing helping you to offer shipping that’s cost-effective and fast.

9) Incentives
Shoppers are often comparing the total cost in their cart (including shipping and taxes), to what they can get from other stores. Why should they shop from you when they can shop from your competitor? In such situations, you want to help break the tie by sweetening the deal.

Solutions:
There are lots of great ways to incentivize shoppers. It’s just a matter of choosing the solutions that fit your business:

If shoppers will need to frequently replenish items, consider offering a discounted recurring subscription with a Magento extension from a team like Aheadworks or a service like ReCharge Payments or Subscribe Pro.
You can also add a loyalty/reward point program like LoyaltyLion to give shoppers reward points.

Another option is to add a Magento extension from a team like AheadWorks or Amasty that will allow you to grant shoppers a free gift with their purchase.

Whether you’re giving shoppers discounts, points, swag, samples, or even closeout items, sometimes a little icing on the cake is all you need to tip the scales in your favor.

10) Site Abandonment
Most of the solutions that made this list are passive, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t leverage more proactive tools. Think of it this way, if a shopper picked up some items in a physical store but abandoned their shopping cart mid-trip, you’d hope that a sales clerk would ask them if everything was ok, or if they needed any help.

Solutions:
Consider solutions that will allow you to help shoppers before they exit, and bring them back if they do leave your store:

A common tool that can help you overcome sales objections is live chat software. Advanced live chat solutions will allow your sales team to actively monitor site visitors, and reach out based on their behavior. If they’ve been checking out a high-end product for a while, your team can see if they have questions or need assistance in real-time.

There are also automated solutions like CartRocket, Justuno, and Nosto that help to keep shoppers engaged and discourage abandoning their carts.

Additionally, you can leverage marketing platforms that will allow you to retarget/remarket to shoppers who didn’t complete a checkout. This can be done through different marketing channels, like e-mails and ads. Popular multichannel marketing platforms that integrate with Magento include Dotdigital, Emarsys, Klaviyo, Listrak, Springbot, Wizgo, and Zaius.

11) Distractions
It’s nice that you want to present lots of value to your shoppers, but sometimes that can be more of a hindrance than a help when they’re ready to checkout. For instance, if you’re presenting upsells to shoppers, they can wind up continuing with their shopping expedition or getting overwhelmed. You specifically want your site to usher shoppers through checkout unless your data is telling you that something else is working well.

Solutions:
Test your site as if you were a shopper, and task others in your organization with doing the same. If something is impeding shoppers from checking out, whether on a desktop or mobile device, consider fixing it pronto. That includes any distracting ads or banners, or hard-to-click buttons or links.

12) Coupon Hunters
If you have a field on your shopping cart or elsewhere in your checkout process that invites shoppers to enter a coupon or promo code, realize that some shoppers will take that as an invitation to start searching the internet for a coupon code to use.

Solutions:
You can consider creating your own page with active coupons where you can offer a nominal discount for deal hunters. If you choose not to offer coupons, you can hide that field altogether.

Keep in mind that, even if you need to offer a shopper a discount, you could potentially do that by issuing loyalty points or providing them with a gift card. It’s not often that people think of a coupon as a good gift.

Conclusion
While your cart abandonment rate may never be 0%, that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your Magento store and increase your revenue. Chances are that you’ve already optimized your online store with some of the issues on this list in mind. If you work with your web developers and web host, you can select which areas of your site to prioritize improving. The most important thing is to take a proactive approach. You should care about the experience your shoppers are having on your website because if you don’t, they’ll find one of your competitors that provides a better customer experience.

JetRails Website: https://jetrails.com/
Twitter Handles: @JetRails @TheRobertRand
Facebook: @JetRails
LinkedIn: @ JetRails + https://www.linkedin.com/in/rrand1/

About the Author:
Robert Rand, Director of Partnerships & Alliances, JetRails

Robert Rand is the Director of Partnerships & Alliances at JetRails, a mission-critical eCommerce hosting service. Robert has over a decade of experience in helping merchants benefit from sound eCommerce and digital marketing strategies, assisting organizations of all types and sizes to grow and succeed via digital commerce. Robert is an Adobe Certified Expert in Magento, a frequent author and thought contributor in the eCommerce industry and the host of The JetRails Podcast.