Tips to Reduce Checkout Abandonment

Have you ever added products in a cart but instead of checking out later, forgot about it completely? 

Yes, that’s how cart or checkout abandonment takes place. 

Be it e-commerce stores, or any other online business, cart abandonment is quite common and at the same time disappointing for the business owners as at the last moment customers back off from buying products!

No doubt that this is what every online business wants to avoid. And here is one surprising fact for you – your billing system has a significant contribution to reduce checkout abandonment. And if you are yet to explore this side of your automated billing tool, then it’s high time to get started!

Find out – Why Checkout Abandonment is Happening?

You invest a hefty amount of money, effort and time in acquiring new customers and retaining them. And then these checkout abandonments happen where customers bounce back from the final checkout page instead of buying your products. While a few cart abandonments are acceptable, its higher frequency definitely affects your business revenue.

According to a recent study conducted by Baymard institute, over  58.6% of the US online shoppers have abandoned a cart in the last three months because of reasons such as –

• Extra costs too high (shipping, tax, fees)  (49%)

• Too long/complicated checkout process (18%)

• I didn’t trust the site with my credit card information (17%)

• Website had errors/ crushed (12%)

• There weren’t enough payment methods (7%)

• The credit card was declined (4%)

And others. 

As you can see from the above statistics, most of these factors driving checkout abandonment can be controlled from your side and not entirely dependent on the customers.

Now, let’s see how you can reduce the checkout abandonments by following simple tips related to the billing!

How to Reduce Checkout Abandonment: Useful Tips

1. Emphasize on Security and Privacy 

This comes on priority because no matter how perfect every other step is, if customers find the payment site is not reliable enough, they are not going to check out. 

• Ensure your billing system comply to PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) to protect customer payment data
• Adopt ISO, SOC1 & SOC2, and MFA standards for internal data security
• Display SSL & PCI badges conveying secure checkouts for the customers
• Maintain server level security and enable VPN detection to prevent unauthorized access

2. Allow Payment with Direct Carrier Billing

Checkout abandonment is not only common in the e-commerce platforms but for subscription-based products or services too such as OTT, gaming, job portals, online learning websites etc., where a customer selects and adds a specific subscription plan to the cart but doesn’t checkout. In such cases the operator billing or Direct Carrier Billing (DCB) can help prevent it by providing a bigger coverage than the traditional payment methods.

Pro Tip: Go for a subscription billing system like Muvi Billing, which offers 50+ telecom service providers across the world and lets you customize the DCB feature and monetization models.

3. Shorter and Simpler Checkout Process

Believe it or not, a longer checkout process is often a big turn off to your customers. So keep it short and simple with only a few mandatory steps like-

• The customer address
• Payment information
• Information related to the products & delivery such as quantity, preferred delivery method (standard or express), etc.

And that’s it!

Also, don’t make the sign up a compulsory before checking out and always keep the option of ‘checkout as a guest’. But don’t forget to give a glimpse of what they will miss out without signing up such as special discounts, free delivery etc.

4. Add Ons

Try to offer some coupons, discounts etc. on the checkout page such as coupon codes for first orders, additional discounts for placing order above a certain value, etc. This gives an instant sense of gain to your customers and reduces the chances of cart abandonment.

5. Comprehensible UX

Easy and simple UX is of high importance, or else your customers can easily get frustrated and leave the checkout page even without purchasing. 

Tips to make a easy-to-understand UX-

• Reduce the number of steps during checkout
• Only provide the necessary information and buttons and nothing redundant
• Provide visual process indicators for easy and fast navigation

6. Multiple Options for- Currency, Payment Type, Payment Gateway, and Language

Imagine a customer from the United States struggling to convert EUR to USD before making a purchase, or customers bouncing back from the final checkout page because their preferred payment type, or gateway is not available or the language is not comprehensible to them at all! 

In order to avoid checkout abandonment due to such reasons, ensure that –

• Your billing system has multiple payment gateways.
• It offers multi-language and multi-currency support.
• Has multiple payment options to cater to the customer preferences.

Pro tip: Opt for a billing system like Muvi Billing, which not only provides these facilities but also allows you to customize payment gateways, set differential tax brackets and multilingual translations  etc.

7. Analysis

Cart abandonments can significantly lower the customer lifecycle value and hence impact your business revenue. The best practice is to regularly keep a check on the average customer order value, recurring revenue and other related metrics so that you can also measure how effective your strategies are to avoid future cart abandonments.

Muvi billing, the enterprise-grade subscription billing software for websites and apps offer 40+ payment gateways, smart record keeping, flexible billing, analytics & insights and many more! It is easy and fast to integrate with your app, website or any third party systems. Furthermore, it gives you an all-in-one solution beyond just automating your billing cycle. As a result, you can implement all the above-mentioned pointers easily to minimize the cart abandonment for your business.

Take a 14-day free trial today and see the difference by your own (No credit card needed)!