Faced with thinning margins, sky-high customer expectations, and mounting fraud, retail and ecommerce businesses are fighting to attract and retain customers in an increasingly competitive landscape. As the industry continues to evolve, there are opportunities to outpace competitors by optimizing your customer experience (CX) to improve acquisitions and conversions, reduce cart abandonment rates, and most importantly, build a loyal customer base. 

Continue reading for potential causes of low conversion and high cart abandonment rates, including a complicated checkout process, and pro tips to help you turn those abandoned carts into sales and casual browsers into brand advocates.

Improving digital experiences has the added benefit of boosting sales in-store as well, as even purchases made in a brick-and-mortar store often begin online. Before consumers make purchase decisions, they're likely to first go through your website or mobile application. According to PwC, 56% of consumers frequently or almost always use mobile devices for pre-purchase research, and 33% visited individual retailers' websites to gather information¹. If these channels have performance issues or seem insecure, shoppers are likely to navigate elsewhere before even glancing at your product selection. If you operate an ecommerce store, the stakes are even higher given your limited number of customer channels.

Here are some potential causes of low acquisition and conversion rates and steps you can take to keep consumers from bouncing.

Cause: Poor Web Speed, Performance, Look and Feel

Shopping online is meant to be convenient, and if an online store or its app fails to deliver a seamless end-to-end experience, customers may flee. Slow-loading websites frustrate customers and lead to high bounce rates. A smooth site and mobile app ensures users stay engaged, and hopefully, complete their purchases, and the highest ecommerce conversion rates occur on pages that load in 1 or 2 seconds².

Pro Tips:

• Create a Mobile-Friendly Design: Keep your web design, product pages, and cart checkout process simple and unified across digital platforms to accommodate the growing number of users who shop via mobile and smart devices.

• Ensure Pages Load Quickly: Users will drop off websites that have a long load time. Optimize your site for speed by compressing images, caching pages, and reducing the use of heavy scripts.

• Utilize Customer Testimonials: Social proofs, including positive ratings and reviews and satisfied customer testimonials with photos can help you build trust through your website and reassure consumers interested in doing business with you.

• Promote Clear Calls-To-Action (CTA): Consumers want to know where to click to buy your products. They expect buttons such as 'Add to Cart' or 'Buy Now' to be clearly visible and easy to understand. Experiment with the color, size, and position of your CTAs to see which ones generate higher conversion rates.

Cause: Complicated Account Registration

If your registration is overly complex, your customers won't just get a little annoyed, they'll likely choose to do business elsewhere – even if their cart is full of products they love.

Pro Tips:

• Make Registration Simple: If you ask too many questions or require too many security hoops, customers will most likely leave your site. To fix this problem, make sure your registration, login, and checkout process is easy and consistent across your website and app. The total number of form fields should be minimized to avoid turning away customers.

• Deploy Single Sign-On (SSO): Allow users to log in with their social media credentials, or by providing a passwordless option. This makes registering easy and convenient for customers willing to create an account. 

Cause: Perceived Lack of Security or Privacy

Our 2024 Consumer Survey found that 87% of consumers worry about identity fraud. An important reminder that while ease-of-use is crucial, security is still a top concern amongst consumers globally. If your sites do not seem secure – or provide reassurances that they are secure – your customers may not feel comfortable entering their personal information and credit card numbers, even if they're eager to buy your products.

Pro Tips:

• Display SSL Certificates: SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates are a must for online shopping websites. Seeing the SSL padlock icon in the address bar of your browser can reassure your customers that all of the data they enter into their browser, like their credit card information,  remains private.

• Prominently Display Security Badges: Security badges on your website, especially on your checkout pages, can reassure customers that your site is prioritizing their digital safety. These badges signify that you have taken steps to protect customer information. Common badges include McAfee, Norton, VeriSign, TrustE, and BBB.

• Be Transparent About Your Privacy Policies: Make your privacy policy accessible and easy to read. It should outline how personal information and data are collected and used. By being transparent about the use of customer information, you can foster trust and a sense of security with your customers.

The "why" of high cart abandonment rates varies and can be complex, but the issue is widespread and impactful for retailers. According to the Baymard Institute, over 70% of carts are abandoned today³. Retailers need to approach the problem from several angles to recoup these lost sales and convert customers interacting with their ecommerce platform.

Highlighted below are some of the primary causes of cart abandonment, along with proven strategies to optimize your checkout experience and improve your abandoned cart recovery flow.

Cause: Forced Account Creation, No Guest Checkout

Some ecommerce sites require users to create an account before they can complete their orders, negatively impacting checkout flow. This all-or-nothing requirement frustrates users during the checkout process who just want to make a quick purchase without spending extra time to register for an account. This prerequisite may even cause them to abandon their cart and go to a competitor's site – 26% of abandoned carts are due to forced account creation, putting this reason second only to unexpected extra costs⁴.

Pro Tips:

• Offer a Guest Checkout Option: Provide an option to checkout without an account so online shoppers can buy your products without taking the extra step of registering, reducing friction in the buying process. 

• Utilize After-Sale Registration: After your customer completes their order using your guest checkout feature, add a special note to your "Thank you for your order" page to offer one-click registration and reinforce the benefits of registering for an account (track your order, receive special promotions, discount codes, etc.) after the checkout process has been completed.

Cause: Unexpected Costs

The most common reason for high cart abandonment rates are the addition of unexpected costs during the checkout process. These could be taxes, unexpected shipping costs, or other hidden charges that were not initially clear when the shopper added products to their cart.

Pro Tips:

• Prioritize Transparency: Be upfront about all costs from the start. Ideally, all costs should be clearly displayed within the product details so customers can make informed decisions before adding items to the cart. Additionally, make sure your return policy is clearly stated and easy to understand.

• Flexible Shipping Options: Shipping fees often come as an unexpected surprise. Offer different shipping prices for different shipping speeds (overnight, a few days, more than a week, etc.). This allows customers to choose the method that best fits their budget and needs. A key reason many shoppers abandon their carts is because of high shipping costs at checkout. To mitigate this concern, consider providing free shipping over a certain order value, which often motivates customers to purchase more items.

• Deliver Real-Time Updates: Provide in-the-moment updates on costs as customers add or remove items from their carts. This way, the total cost is always clear throughout the shopping experience, regardless of how long it lasts.

Cause: Inadequate Payment Options

Consider your target market when deciding which payment options to offer, as Baby Boomers may not have the same preferences as Gen Zers, for example. According to Ernst & Young, Gen Zers were up to three times more likely to use an alternative payment method, such as contactless and payment apps, compared to other generations⁵. If your potential customer's preferred payment method is not available, they may not proceed with their purchase. In general, making the payment process as easy as possible is key to decreasing your cart abandonment rate.

Pro Tips:

• Offer a Variety Payment Options: Payment methods like credit/debit cards and buy now/pay later options give customers flexibility, regardless of preference. Additionally, some customers prefer to pay directly from their bank account using services like ACH in the U.S. or SEPA in Europe.

• Support Mobile Payment: Services like Venmo, Cash App, and Zelle are increasingly popular, especially with younger customers. Digital wallets, like PayPal and Apple Pay, also continue to see growing adoption, as some consumers are not comfortable sharing card details, especially for a first purchase with an unknown retailer.

• Provide Non-Traditional Payment Methods: For customers who don't have access to credit cards or bank accounts, offering payment via prepaid gift cards can be a convenient option.

All of the tips we've discussed around increasing conversion rates and reducing cart abandonment rates can have a measurable impact on your bottom line, but how do retailers and ecommerce sites take that next step from generating customers and sales to developing a loyal network of brand ambassadors that are recommending you to their friends and family?

What are some key causes keeping your business from building trust and driving this level of dedication, and what can you do about it?

Cause: Disjointed User Experience Across Channels

Omnichannel shopping, sometimes referred to as hybrid shopping, is the new norm, and while online retail sales continue to grow worldwide, consumers expect to be able to shop in person, on your website and/or app, and even on social media, taking recommendations from their favorite influencers. Even purchases made in-store are often researched ahead of time online, and hybrid methods like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) are growing in popularity and adoption.

While omnichannel shopping gives retailers the opportunity to scale more quickly, it also makes delivering a consistent customer journey more challenging, and more important, than ever. The data shows strong omnichannel engagement can increase average sales revenue by 9.5%⁶. 

Pro Tips:

• Drive Consistency: A smooth transition and consistent look and feel from mobile, to web, to support, to brick-and-mortar can mean the difference between a customer returning and a customer churning. 

• Deliver a Flexible Experience: Provide customers with a variety of options to browse, purchase, and receive products across different channels. This can include services like buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS), curbside pickup, and ship-from-store options.

• Offer Omnichannel Customer Support: Allow customers to receive support in a variety of ways, such as live chat on your website, in-store assistance, social media messaging, and phone support, all connected through a unified system, and follow up with customers via their preferred communication channel. 

• Continuously Optimize Customer Experiences: Create better experiences that maximize customer satisfaction by implementing A/B testing and tuning experiences as needed based on customer preferences. Track cart abandonment and other metrics as you make UX changes to ensure customers are reacting favorably to the experience.

Cause: Frustrating Login Process

A seamless login experience is critical to creating loyal brand advocates. Findings from our 2024 Consumer Survey reveal 54% of global consumers have abandoned an account or online service due to login frustrations, and 75% wish they could change how they log in to apps and websites they frequently use.

Pro Tips:

• Implement Passwordless Sign-In: Users get frustrated if they constantly forget their password and have to stop and reset their credentials. With today's easy-to-implement passwordless technology, even small- to medium-sized businesses can offer their customers passwordless authentication to improve the end-to-end experience.

• Enable Persistent Sessions: Allow customers to remain safely logged in longer by relying on passive fraud checks to ensure their sessions do not get hijacked, providing customers with a faster, easier path to checkout that can increase likelihood to purchase by as much as 30%. 

• Offer Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): Weak and default passwords, or passwords stolen through phishing and other attack methods, are still being used to execute successful fraud attacks and data breaches. Confirming the identities of your customers through MFA thwarts attackers and reassures users that their accounts are secure. Allow your users to choose between several MFA methods for a better experience.

Cause: A Lack of Data-Driven Personalization

Today's hybrid shopping environment provides retailers with the opportunity to deliver a hyper-personal CX. With a clear understanding of each customer's shopping habits, retailers have the opportunity to deliver cross-brand promotions on a targeted basis, increasing the effectiveness of up-sell opportunities.

Pro Tips:

• Ensure Data is Centralized: This allows information to be accessible across both online and in-store platforms, enabling you to build a unified customer profile based on purchasing history, preferences, and behavior across channels, which can be used to deliver personalized offers.

• Track Real-Time Interactions: This includes customer browsing history on their mobile app or recent purchases in-store. Use this data to trigger targeted promotions, like coupon codes, and leverage email retargeting, or abandoned cart emails, by sending timely incentives like discounts or free shipping offers. This tactic can help businesses encourage shoppers to return to their online shopping cart and complete their transaction, not only improving abandoned cart recovery, but also demonstrating a proactive, customer-centric focus.

• Leverage AI and Machine Learning: Predict future purchases or interests based on a ccustomer's past behavior. For instance, if a customer frequently buys a specific brand, you could offer them a promotion on new arrivals from the same brand or a similar product line.

1. https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/industries/consumer-markets/consumer-insights-survey.html

2. https://queue-it.com/blog/ecommerce-website-speed-statistics/

3. https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

4. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1228452/reasons-for-abandonments-during-checkout-united-states/

5. https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/payments/how-gen-z-is-changing-the-payments-landscape

6. https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/omnichannel-statistics