A Guide to Tools and Strategies to Prevent Cart Abandonment in WooCommerce

As a WooCommerce business owner, you’re probably all too familiar with cart abandonment. Users add your items to their digital carts only to never follow through with purchasing them. This issue can hurt your sales and your confidence, but thankfully, you can implement strategies to prevent it. 

At Bear North Digital, we have the skills and experience to prevent cart abandonment. In addition to implementing your own strategies, WooCommerce marketing services by Bear North Digital can help you prevent cart abandonment in your WooCommerce store. Contact our marketing experts at (218) 216-8692 and begin streamlining your checkout process today.

Understanding Why WooCommerce Cart Abandonment Occurs

Cart abandonment is a problem many WooCommerce business owners face. Understanding the underlying causes of this issue can help you address and mitigate them. 

The most common causes of cart abandonment in WooCommerce stores include:

• Required account creation
• Additional costs added at checkout,
• Inadequate shipping methods and prices
• Store security issues
• No promotional codes

Consumers want a fast checkout process and to know that their personal information will not face exposure. When they’re faced with barriers to checking out, they may leave your WooCommerce site for another one or abandon the idea of purchasing your type of products altogether. 

Some individuals may not feel compelled to buy your products at the end of the process. Additional cart abandonment in WooCommerce stores results from store visitors only researching products or changing their mind about purchasing items. These individuals may return later to complete purchases, but many do not.

Tools and Strategies to Prevent WooCommerce Cart Abandonment

Cart abandonment causes your WooCommerce business to lose sales at the most crucial moments in a customer’s journey. Investing in tools and strategies to minimize this issue can provide a significant ROI. 

You can improve your cart abandonment rate by identifying your customers’ pain points when shopping and resolving them with efficient processes. Follow these strategies and tools for ultimate success.

1. A Quick, Easy Checkout Process

The easiest way to reverse cart abandonment in WooCommerce stores is to simplify the checkout process. Shoppers don’t want to spend a significant amount of their time filling out order forms. Consumers are more likely to give up on lengthy checkout processes.

Minimizing the amount of time it takes to complete the checkout helps your store retain customers and ensure successful purchases. Between having multiple checkout pages and requiring that customers make accounts before completing checkout, these issues can discourage shoppers from going through with their purchase. 

WooCommerce allows you to tailor the checkout process with one-page checkout plugins and other similar solutions. Alternatively, consider implementing a one-click purchase button and allow visitors to save their checkout information without entering it multiple times.

Remove unnecessary fields from your checkout form. By doing so, you’ll help your shoppers save more time and increase their likelihood of following through with the purchase. 

2. Multiple Payment Options

Credit cards and debit cards are the most popular payment methods for WooCommerce shoppers. However, if your WooCommerce site doesn’t offer a shopper’s preferred payment method, they may abandon their cart. Mastercard, Visa, American Express, and Discover are among the top credit cards to have in your WooCommerce store.

Paypal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and other payment platforms are ideal for ensuring customers have an easy way to pay. One-click payment buttons allow shoppers to pay automatically. An easy login process means they don’t have to enter several fields of information as their payment accounts automatically save the necessary details.

WooCommerce features primary payment methods like Stripe or Paypal. You can add additional payment methods to increase shopper retention rates. Implementing popular payment types prevents cart abandonment by allowing users the flexibility they need to pay for their order.

3. Guest Checkouts

Not everyone wants to make a dedicated account to purchase items on your WooCommerce store. Having to create a new account takes excess time and energy when many customers want a quick purchasing process. While account creation allows shoppers to save their information, it can slow down the process.

To prevent cart abandonment, WooCommerce store owners can allow guest checkouts. This tactic can improve your cart abandonment rate by reducing the time involved in the checkout process.

Alternatively, preventing guest checkouts may get you more email signups, but more cart abandonment. If your cart abandonment rates are high and you already get frequent email registrations, implementing guest checkouts can be a worthwhile trade-off. 

4. Easy Cart Access

Cart abandonment in WooCommerce also occurs when it’s difficult to access the cart. Hiding the cart in store menus adds further difficulty when online shopping. Customers may abandon their carts if they have to dig through menus or continuously scroll to the top of a page.

Floating buttons that move as customers scroll through your store can make it easier for customers to access the cart, thus decreasing cart abandonment rates. Alternatively, having the cart button at an easily accessible location can decrease abandonment rates.

WooCommerce offers plugins for easy cart access. Shoppers can view the items in their cart from anywhere on the page so they don’t have to open new tabs or scroll to the top of a page.

5. Several Shipping Options

Many different shipping options are ideal for preventing cart abandonment. Offering several shipping methods, speeds, and carriers can significantly improve your purchase success. While some shoppers may not mind waiting longer to receive their orders, others prefer or require faster shipping times. 

WooCommerce stores offering physical products can choose between multiple mail carriers. Listing prices for each shipping method also ensures that your customers can make the best decision and get their purchase within the time period they desire. Displaying all prices clearly ensures that there are no surprises that discourage shoppers from making a purchase.

As many customers abandon their carts due to unexpectedly high shipping fees and other additional costs, offering free shipping is a great way to prevent cart abandonment in WooCommerce. The majority of customers prefer free shipping, but even $1 or $2 shipping deals can promote the same effect. 

Regarding digital items, physical shipping methods are unnecessary. Instead, WooCommerce allows you to quickly deliver purchased digital products to the customer’s email address. Multiple WooCommerce plugins display physical and digital shipping options and their prices for easier checkouts.

6. Transparency Before Checking Out

The last thing your customers want is to deal with unexpected costs. After searching for the perfect product and expecting particular costs, cart abandonment occurs when shoppers see the actual costs of products and the additional fees.

To prevent cart abandonment, WooCommerce store owners should display all cost-related information in a clear, easy-to-read manner. Listing the cart’s subtotal, shipping costs, and taxes provides a level of transparency that shoppers trust and enjoy.

WooCommerce features shipping cost calculators to determine how much customers will pay upfront. There are no surprising fees, and shoppers know exactly what to expect before checking out.

Instead of tacking on additional fees during the checkout process, remain transparent by making them optional. Allowing customers to choose between additional add-ons is an excellent way to further control additional costs. Shoppers can keep final costs lower or take advantage of extras as desired. 

7. Automated Reminders

While some customers abandon carts due to high prices, others simply forget to return to their carts. Sending automated reminders about cart abandonment is an effective method of getting these individuals to return. When they notice a reminder in their inbox, they may decide to continue the checkout process.

Multiple plugins target your store’s visitors if they abandon their cart. Cart abandonment recovery plugins work by asking for customer email addresses during the checkout process. If they enter their email, they’ll receive automated reminders to return to your store and continue their purchase if they abandon their cart. 

Plugins like the WooCommerce Recover Abandoned Cart tool make it easy to send several emails to get the best results. It’s essential to prevent spam by only sending a few emails. Too many follow-ups can further discourage them from continuing the checkout.

8. Targeted Marketing

In addition to follow-up emails for cart abandonment, WooCommerce stores also benefit from targeting their shoppers in other ways. Notifications throughout the shopping experience and excellent branding are ways to directly target your audience and encourage them to make purchases instead of abandoning their cart.

WooCommerce store owners can target their customers and position their stores as the top authority by inspiring their shoppers. Whether through compelling branding with an inspirational story or sending notifications throughout the shopping process, these methods can lower your cart abandonment rate significantly.

It’s crucial to provide value to your customers. Encouraging customers to view product reviews for the items in their cart can further secure purchases. 

Additionally, plugins for exit-intent prevention can significantly decrease cart abandonment. These plugins detect when shoppers want to leave your store and display a pop-up message with an incentive or encouraging message to continue the checkout process.

9. Incentives For Returning to Abandoned Carts

Sending reminders about abandoned carts may not be enough to entice visitors to return to your store. If customers find additional costs too high, additional strategies to return to their cart provide the necessary value that visitors desire.

A top strategy to prevent cart abandonment in WooCommerce is to provide an incentive for returning to the abandoned cart. Giving customers exclusive coupon codes in email content for continuing with their purchase is effective for offsetting shipping fees and taxes and gives them a reason to return. Extra add-ons and coupon codes for future digital and physical purchases may further encourage store visitors.

The last thing you want is to annoy potential customers by being overly pushy. Balance is necessary to prevent customers from feeling overly targeted.

Learn More About Preventing WooCommerce Cart Abandonment

At Bear North Digital, we have the knowledge and skills to ensure that your WooCommerce store visits convert to sales. Whether you need assistance analyzing WooCommerce metrics, assigning user roles for easier store management, or establishing a successful strategy to encourage potential customers to return to their abandoned carts, our team can help. 

Look no further than Bear North Digital to learn more about preventing cart abandonment in WooCommerce shops. With assistance from our marketing professionals, you’ll get an individualized strategy that decreases your abandoned cart rates and maintains your bottom line. 

Get the effective help you need when you speak to our digital marketers at Bear North Digital. Contact us today to learn more at (218) 216-8692.