Tackling shopping cart abandonment can improve your conversion by up to 35%

Everyone who has ever run an online store, eCommerce or marketplace knows how frustrating a shopping cart abandonment case might be. You will find many studies and various cart abandonment stats across the internet, but all those numbers have one thing in common - they are definitely not in favour of vendors. According to Statista, in March 2020, as many as 88 per cent (!) of online shopping orders were abandoned. And according to the Forrester research dropping the shopping cart costs eCommerce brands up to $18 billion in yearly sales revenue. These figures can be staggering for many of us, but they are the daily bread for eCommerce businesses searching for an ultimate solution to combat dropping the shopping cart on their websites. 

So first things first. Let’s figure out what precisely cart abandonment is, what are the potential reasons for this phenomenon and possible ways of handling it.

Abandonment in eCommerce

A general term ‘abandonment’ refers to a situation where a visitor on a web page leaves that page before completing the desired action. It can refer to booking abandonment, form abandonment, or, like in the case of eCommerce - cart abandonment.

However, the shopping cart abandonment definition itself applies to two different situations - cart abandonment and checkout abandonment, which show you an exact point where the users leave the process. Recognising the differences between them is essential to tackle each problem, develope a long term sales strategy to reduce both issues and to secure a delightful customer experience, especially in B2B eCommerce. 

Cart abandonment and cart abandonment rate 

Cart abandonment occurs when a potential customer leaves the site or app after adding an item to their shopping cart. On its basis, it is possible to calculate a cart abandonment rate, which gives insight into the customers’ behaviour and shows precisely how many users signal purchase intent but don’t follow through with the process.  

Many factors influence dropping the cart at this stage, such as unexpected shipping or product fees,  poor shopping performance and speed, lack of information about the products, limited shipping options, website crashes or bugs. 

What is significant for this phase is that many customers utilize the cart as a form of the shopping list to help them organize and visualize their online shopping in a universal, accessible way. In most cases, this does not indicate an intention to make a purchasing decision. And it is up to you now to guide them to check out and don’t lose the effort you have put in making them interested in your products.

Checkout abandonment 

After the client has filled their cart with products, they continue their customer journey and check out. Checkout abandonment happens when a potential customer who has initiated the checkout process didn’t pursue the purchase in the end. The checkout abandonment rate will always be slightly lower than the cart abandonment rate and is usually associated with high buying costs. 

The reasons for dropping out at this stage include a lengthy and time-consuming checkout process, many form fields to input, lack of payment options, shipping problems or unsafe payment processing tools and again, unexpected fees. 

3 root causes of abandonment in B2B eCommerce

All of the factors mentioned above apply both to B2C and B2B sectors equally. But, there are some particular problems that B2B clients encounter while shopping online, which not only may result in dropping the cart but can affect your business relations and here is why.

As we all know, B2B sales process is much more complex, and it usually involves more than one individual in the decision-making process. That is why it requires giving extra attention and often providing guidance to the client.  And this matters now more than ever after what happened in 2020, where it was nearly impossible to predict online growth, and many B2B sellers lost their clients. Delivering an excellent customer experience, in this case, is the key to keep your customers engaged and close the deal. 

In our opinion, there are three particular root causes that contribute to cart and checkout abandonment by B2B clients, including lack of personalization, long and repetitive ordering procedure and lack of guidance.  

Lack of personalization

First of all, the personalization issue manifests itself in the high costs of orders. B2B shopping usually involves much bigger orders and much higher costs, which entails creating an individual offer for the client that includes attractive discounts and special offers. B2B clients who add items to the shopping cart and do not have the option to negotiate the terms of purchase will probably look for a different solution and another vendor to provide them with a discount. 

Extended and repetitive ordering procedure 

Another issue that B2B clients encounter on a daily basis is the massive amount of administrative actions that they need to perform to close a single order. The number of forms fields to input while checking out is much more significant; it takes much more time and often needs to be performed with each subsequent order. 

Lack of guidance

Finally, the reason why B2B customers drop their shopping carts is the lack of assisting them along their customer journey, which is why they cannot make an informed decision, are confused about the products and leave without buying. 

Levering Meetsales’ onsite widget to close your sales process

There are multiple ways of dealing with the cart abandonment issue, but it is necessary to address all of the problems mentioned above to combat it ultimately. It is crucial to have transparent pricing, avoid unexpected costs, have a seamlessly running website and a simple checkout. You can also install push notifications, run retargeting campaigns, but are all those solutions enough when it comes to the B2B sector?

We say that extraordinary times call for exceptional measures, and this is where our Meetsales’ onsite widget steps into the game. 

As a sales enablement platform, Meetsales gives you and your sales team a chance to take control of your whole sales process once again. We have created an onsite widget that enables your customers to book a video call with your sales team right away when put on your marketplace or online store. So whenever your customers want to find out more about your product, ask for a personalized offer, negotiate the price or simply get in touch, they are just one click away. 

Simultaneously, the Meetsales platform gives you instant access to your customer’s purchase history, providing you with information such as the total order value, the average purchase amount, or the most frequently purchased products. 

As we showed in one of our previous blogs, a human to human conversation provides plenty of valuable data, giving your sales team a deeper understanding of clients’ needs and an accurate estimation of buying intent. Leveraging our newest feature not only allows sales reps to close the gaps in the sales process but also to deliver a complete customer experience and gives a chance to act on it immediately. 

Well to end on a positive note, the studies have shown that by solely improving your checkout experience, the conversion rate can increase by 35%, so nothing is lost. It is up to you to act and fight for the recovery of the abandoned carts and checkouts. With Meetsales’ help, you can approach this issue in two ways. Firstly, by improving the overall sales process and secondly, using Meetsales’ widget as a lifeline in times where your customers need quick additional support.

If you have any questions about how exactly Meetsales’ widget works or would like to discuss using it on your website, do not hesitate to contact us! We will be happy to help!