Why customers leave shops without purchases

We analyzed the online forms of seven online stores and shared useful tips on working with abandoned baskets of online stores.

Among marketers, there are two different approaches to how to increase the conversion of an online store. Some of them are convinced that the problem outside about the site and its products simply do not know, so you need to tell the world as loudly as possible about it. The other part understands that something is wrong with how the site looks, how the offer is formulated, how the sales funnel is built.

If e-commerce has traffic, but sales do not go instead of increasing the budget for contextual advertising, it is worthwhile to look at your business processes. In addition, are you doing everything right? How effective is the sales chain?

In general, it is for this purpose that call tracking is needed, it links information about the customer behavior on the site and their phone calls. The combination of online and offline queries allows you to look at how you communicate with visitors to an online store and understand what is lacking for productive sales.

Before proceeding with the analysis of the topic, we would like to share the experience of tracking abandoned baskets and working with them in your company. As a result, there were three clear councils, which should be heeded:

1. Determine what an abandoned basket is

The abandoned baskets are all considered in different ways. Therefore, before analyzing this indicator, you need to answer the following questions:

• After how many minutes from the moment of adding the goods to the basket, can it be considered abandoned?
• How long does it take to store a basket for a specific user?
• Is it worth to focus on the completion of the session or the presence of the client on the site?

We spent several hours to agree on what we would consider an abandoned basket.

2. Understand which audience and at what stages the shopping cart is thrown on your site

Any article on the Internet is either generalized data, or individual experience of a particular site. Your experience can be very different. For example, in our site, experienced users, and not at all newcomers lead the ratio of the abandoned to the created. That is, the problem is not so much in a complicated checkout, as in the characteristics of user behavior.

3. Testing

It is very important to test any changes aimed at increasing the conversion, and compare with the control group. Send letters, how many and with what interval, start remarketing and whether for a long time all this is worth testing.

Adding goods to the shopping cart a signal of intention to buy

If the user “postponed the goods” then it is already in the sales funnel. Further, he can:

1. Finish the purchase.
2. Make a call.
3. Make a callback request (using a special form on the site).
4. Just leave the site for one reason or another.

In the first case, all the information about the user’s behavior and his data is delivered to the seller through the site, creating or supplementing the customer’s card. In the second and third cases a call, as an event, it is necessary to combine with the online sessions of the guest of the site, with which call reference services are excellent.

What reasons encourage users to call before making a purchase?

• To compensate for all the technical imperfections of the online store;
• To remove the last doubts about the quality of products and equipment;
• Specify the speed and price of delivery.
• For an online store, a call is an opportunity;
• Build long-term relationships through positive emotions;

Increase the size of the average check by offering additional accessories.

We are especially interested in the situation when the client leaves, throwing the basket for some reason, since it is the answer to it that will allow you to achieve sales growth without the need to increase investment in marketing.

What unexpected shortcomings can be found in the online stores?

We analyzed 7 sites:

1. Shop of tiles and plumbing (9 thousand visitors per month);
2. Flower holding (77 thousand visitors per month);
3. Online store of radio controlled models (14.8 thousand visitors a month);
4. Shop accessories (81 thousand visitors a month);
5. A store of accessories for products (74 thousand visitors a month);
6. Smart market electronics (425 thousand visitors a month);
7. Online store of technology and electronics (309 thousand visitors a month).

We chose these sites, because each of them interested us in a nonstandard approach or unexpected mistakes. Here are the shortcomings we noticed when we went through the registration process on each of them:

• You cannot always use all the features without registering.
• It happens that the product is not available, although it is actively advertised on the main page.
• In the basket, you cannot check the characteristics of the goods.
• The site has technical problems that distract from the purchase.
• There is no convenient payment system or embarrasses its security.

According to a study by HubSpot, 66% of buyers “throw” the basket before reaching the purchase. Such a volume of unfinished transactions is exactly worth it to distract from the increase in the volume of contextual advertising and give more time to those who came to the site, but did not dare to buy. Moreover, according to the same research, those who returned are ready to spend 55% more than other customers of the store.

Obviously, among the refusing customers, there is a part of those who were not embarrassed by the problems we noticed, and the refusal is connected with other reasons. If you believe the infographics Milo, then there can be three reasons:

• The buyer is not ready to purchase (57%);
• The buyer decided to postpone the goods for later (56%);
• The reason for the refusal was the high cost of delivery (55%).

Conclusions

1. Look for the potential for conversion growth not only in increasing the advertising budget, but also in internal optimization;
2. Try to determine as precisely as possible what an abandoned basket is;
3. Find out who exactly leaves without having made a transaction, but filling out the basket;
4. Before implementing changes in the purchasing process, test them on the control group;
5. Use call tracking to control online and offline conversions within the same Google Analytics interface.
6. Keep an eye on the cards of the goods so that the information in them is complete and always relevant;
7. Analyze the audience and offer it relevant payment and delivery options;
8. Enter the constant control of your online store for technical errors and failures;
9. Simplify the registration process to a minimum before buying.