The #1 Reason For Abandoned Cart

Does your t-shirt brand struggle with high abandoned cart rates?

If so, listen up because this is for you.

I recently saw an infographic stating that the number one reason for abandonment during checkout is that delivery costs are too high. Not only that, 50% of those surveyed stated this is their number one reason for abandoning checkout...no other reason was even close!

This is obviously a challenge for us as small business owners, since our shipping costs seem to continue going up and may continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

So why is this happening and what can you do about it?

Well, in the age of "Amazon Prime", consumer expectations are changing. They expect faster shipping at lower costs and preferably for free. The obvious solution would be offering free shipping on all orders and completely removing the objection. However, unless you're willing to sacrifice your margins, this is obviously not feasible for most of us.

So what can we do to improve our cart abandonment?

I want to provide you some solutions that you can apply to hopefully recover more of these prospective buyers because at the end of the day, making a sale in which you discount shipping or offer it for free is much better than no sale at all.

#1 - BAKE THE COST OF SHIPPING INTO YOUR PRODUCT PRICE

Yes, that may mean increasing your prices, but it will lower the barrier to entry for anyone who gets to the point of checkout.

I believe that the t-shirt price itself is rarely the reason that people abandon their carts and this infographic seems to support my theory, in the sense that product costs being too high didn't even make the top 10 list for top reasons for cart abandonment!

#2 - SETUP AUTOMATED EMAIL AND SMS ABANDON CART MESSAGES

It should go without saying that you should ALWAYS follow up with customers who've abandoned their carts. You never know the reason why they left, but you know they put a product in their cart so likely had buyer intent. Maybe they were shopping on their phone, got distracted, and forgot about their order. Many times just sending them a reminder about the product they were going to buy can bring them back to close the sale.

You should always setup your Abandoned Cart automated emails (aka Flows) and/or SMS messages and it doesn't hurt to test offering free shipping to incentivize these customers to come back and complete their purchase.

#3 - TEST PAID RETARGETING ADS

You can test paid retargeting ads through platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and offer free shipping to incentivize people to return and complete their purchase.

#4 - OFFER A FREE SHIPPING THRESHOLD

Offering a free shipping threshold is one of my favorite ways to reward those who purchase more (i.e. those high order value customers) with free shipping.

So this could be offering free shipping on orders $75 or above, free shipping on orders $100 or above, or wherever you want that threshold to be set at. This will incentivize customers to spend to the threshold to get the free shipping, hence letting them remove the biggest obstacle to completing their purchase.

It's important to realize that not everyone objects to paying for shipping and most t-shirt brands do charge for this, but with these solutions, you can continue to charge for shipping to those who are willing to pay while incentivizing those who are not willing to pay to prevent and/or recover more abandoned checkouts.

SUMMARY

If your t-shirt brand struggles with high abandoned cart rates, then its time to deal with one of the biggest reasons customers abandon carts: high shipping costs. A few solutions that have worked for me that you can try as well are incorporating some or all of the shipping cost in the product price, setting up your abandoned cart email and SMS flows to nudge customers back to their cart, running retargeting ads to incentivize them to come back, and creating a free shipping threshold to reward them with free shipping on larger orders. Remember, not everyone objects to paying for shipping, but it helps to provide solutions for those that do. A sale is better than no sale!  

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