Online shopping provides unparalleled convenience. With just a few clicks, we can browse products, add items to our cart, and purchase anything our heart desires. But despite this convenience, abandoning online shopping carts is an all-too-common occurrence.
Research from Baymard Institute shows that the average cart abandonment rate is 69.57%. That’s brutal.
As an online retailer, high abandonment rates can drastically impact your bottom line. Good news is there’s hope. By understanding the psychology behind why shoppers bail on their carts, you can create solutions to encourage more customers to follow through on checkout.
In this article, I’ll share one of the most overlooked psychological triggers I’ve seen that cause consumers to ditch their carts, along with actionable strategies you can implement right away to mitigate this issue.
Extra Costs Lead to Extra Frustration
One of the top reasons for abandoned shopping carts comes down to unexpected additional costs popping up at the end of the checkout process. These include things like:
- Shipping fees
- Taxes
- Handling charges
- Account creation requirements
When a customer is surprised by new charges towards the end of checkout, it can make them feel tricked. This triggers frustration, annoyance, and anxiety.
In the consumer’s mind, the extra costs increase the total price tag of your offer. Even if the amounts are relatively small, it can seriously damage consumer trust in your brand.
Be Upfront About Costs
The best way to combat this cart abandonment trigger is to clearly communicate the full pricing details upfront. Don’t wait until the end of the checkout process to surprise customers with additional expenses.
Here are some tips to consider:
- Display shipping costs on product pages or in the cart so they are aware before checkout.
- If you have tiered shipping charges based on cart total or item weights, provide clear explanations about how those work.
- List estimated tax costs on product pages and update the estimate in the cart.
- Disclose any account creation fees or handling charges on your website policies.
The more transparency you offer from the start, the less chance of extra charges being a nasty shock that drives shoppers away.
Offer Free Shipping Incentives
Another way to counteract this abandonment trigger is to offer free shipping above a reasonable order value. For example:
“Enjoy free shipping on all orders over $50!”
This incentive gives customers more motivation to increase their cart value to hit that threshold. Even if shipping is only $5-10, customers love free perks.
Time-limited free shipping promotions can also be effective for capitalizing on this psychological trigger. For example:
“Get free 2-day shipping when you spend $75+ this weekend only!”
The urgency and scarcity of a short-term promo creates excitement and a fear of missing out. This can prompt consumers to complete their purchase while the deal lasts.
Lengthy Checkout Processes Are Draining
In addition to extra costs, a long and complicated checkout process often leads to dropped shopping carts.
Customers today expect fast, streamlined checkouts. But clunky page designs, too many fields to fill out, excessive cross-sells, or a confusing flow will trigger frustration.
This user frustration builds the longer the consumer is stuck battling a tedious checkout experience. The more time and mental energy the process requires, the higher the odds of abandonment.
Streamline Checkout Field Requirements
Go through your checkout flow and cut any non-essential fields. Too many text boxes or drop downs become overwhelming. Follow these tips:
- Only require critical user details like name, email, address and payment info.
- Use smart address autocomplete features to avoid manual field entry.
- Set reasonable defaults for optional fields when possible to skip extra clicks.
- Avoid requiring customers to create an account just to complete checkout. Offer it as a streamlined option, not a demand.
The shorter you can make the required form fields, the less chance of frustration build up.
Limit and Refine Cross-Sells
While some personalized cross-sells can enhance order values, excessive attempts after the cart can backfire. With each additional click to dismiss or navigate past unwanted upsell offers, customers become more irritated.
Carefully assess your checkout cross-sells to determine if they are helping or hurting completion rates. I would recommend considering these practices:
- Limit cross-sells to 1-3 focused, highly-relevant offers only.
- Test cross-sell formats like single page injections vs multi-step modals to see what converts best.
- Make dismissing cross-sells easy with clear small “No Thanks” links – don’t force customers to manually close or navigate through too many pages.
- Time cross-sell injections appropriately when shoppers are less distracted to improve engagement.
The key is crafting cross-sells that entice rather than annoy to boost conversions.
Optimize Page Speed
Slow page load times are one of the quickest ways to have customers bail from the checkout process. Even delays of a few seconds can contribute to abandonment.
Work on website optimizations like images compression, reduced server calls, and efficient code to make pages load faster. I’ve recommended monitoring tools like Google PageSpeed Insights, Pingdom, and GTmetrix to my clients to help reveal checkout bottlenecks.
The faster your checkout function overall, the less likely technical slowdowns will facilitate cart abandonment. Patience quickly wears thin when customers just want to complete their purchase – I’m sure you’ve experienced that as well.
Distractions Disrupt Purchase Momentum
Finally, distractions pose another major threat to checkout completion. Modern consumers multi-task and have short attention spans. Any distraction arising during checkout can interrupt their purchase momentum.
Common cart abandonment distractions include:
- Phone calls or texts
- Email pop-up notifications
- Kids or family members needing attention
- More pressing priorities popping up
Once distracted, the motivation to finish shopping gets shifted. Out of sight, out of mind, and you’re out of a sale.
To prevent this from happening to you, I’ll go over some ways in the next sections to help your brand not fall prey to these distractions.
Create Urgency and Scarcity
Proven ways to counteract purchase distractions include conveying urgency or scarcity.
For example:
- Countdown timer on limited-supply products
- Flash sales with urgent messaging
- Highlighting coming inventory shortages
This sense of urgency helps shoppers stay focused through distractions and incentivizes them to complete the purchase while they still can.
Follow Up Abandoned Carts
You can also re-capture distracted shoppers through triggered email and SMS follow-ups on abandoned carts. The reminders bring their purchase to the top of their mind again.
Make follow-ups motivational by sharing things like:
- Discount codes for completing checkout
- Notifications of decreasing inventory
- Time limits for exclusive promos
Follow-up cadence testing can reveal the optimal frequency and messaging combinations to boost cart completion.
Save Carts For Later
Finally, allow customers to easily “Save For Later” if they do get interrupted.
This preserves their cart for completion at a more convenient time when distractions settle down. Emailing reminders to come back to saved carts further facilitates re-engagement.
The key is keeping their purchase intention alive through the distraction. Don’t force an immediate checkout if it results in abandonment. Give shoppers the power to pause and return on their terms.
Turn Cart Abandonment Insights Into Profits
Understanding the psychology behind shopping cart abandonment is the first step to stemming the revenue drain. Minor user experience tweaks informed by these behavioral insights can yield big conversion rate improvements.
Here are some key takeaways for lowering cart abandonment:
- Disclose all costs and fees upfront to avoid negative surprise.
- Offer free shipping or expedited delivery on larger orders.
- Streamline checkout field requirements and page flows.
- Carefully test and optimize cross-sells placement and content.
- Speed up page load times wherever possible.
- Create urgency and scarcity to counteract purchase distractions.
- Send timely abandoned cart reminders and offer compelling incentives.
- Allow customers to save their cart for later to avoid forcing checkout.
Small changes to address the psychological triggers behind abandonment can add up to huge revenue recovery over time. Listen to your customers’ pain points and behavior patterns. Let human insights guide your optimization efforts.
With higher conversion rates, you can recapture lost profits from abandoned carts to grow your online business. Just a tiny 1% increase in conversions on 100 online orders per day could mean massive revenue from recovered sales over a year.
Now that you know what motivates customers to ditch their carts, you can create personalized solutions to guide them seamlessly through checkout. Meet their needs and shopping experience expectations at each touchpoint to turn more browsers into happy buyers.