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The Checkout Abandonment Problem is becoming a real issue for online merchants, especially as mobile comes into play more often, and it can result in merchants missing up to 40% of their sales without even knowing it. Merchants need a good way to define, measure, and analyze their checkout abandonment problem in order to combat it with the best forces possible. The first step is to identify whether you’re facing a cart abandonment or checkout abandonment problem. Once you have identified where your problem comes from, then you can begin making fixes on your eCommerce checkout page.

To give you an idea of what you may want to fix on your eCommerce checkout, we created an infographic analyzing the data that we’ve seen come through on the calculator thus far. We’ve divided it into the three sections of the checkout abandonment problem that online merchants face: friction, confidence, and payments.

checkout abandonment problem
Infographic by Stephanie Farber (BlueSnap)

The Checkout Abandonment Problem: Friction

Nothing frustrates customers more than having to click and click and click before they finally get to the submit button. Over 20% of merchants that have taken the Calculator are facing checkout abandonment problems because they are asking customers to click 5-10 times before checking out (ugh!). Additionally, only 60% of merchants who sell globally offer local checkout experiences for their international customers – which can cause those customers to say “adios”.

Confidence

Customers want to feel confident when they check out on your site – you are taking their sensitive payment information, after all!

To avoid the checkout abandonment problem offer things such as product reviews (40% of calculator merchants don’t), live chat (a whopping 42% don’t have this), coupons (33% of merchants are missing out on bargain shoppers), and security logos at checkout (36% of merchants aren’t doing this). Customers don’t want to feel like they’re being taken down some shady back alley in order to checkout on your site – make them feel comfortable in any way possible, including these four strategies.

Payments

Though this is the more invisible part of the checkout abandonment problem, it is probably the most important to convert more shoppers to buyers. For example, 70% of merchants don’t offer subscriptions – but could be utilizing them to having higher success rates on their higher transaction values. Only 6% of respondents on the calculator offer more than 10 payment types, and only 44% offer local payment methods, which means that many are casting out international shoppers without even giving it a second thought.

Lastly, 50% of respondents have only one acquiring bank and 73% don’t have failover – should a transaction fail at their first bank they are losing out on critical conversions and cash money for their businesses. Thinking of strategies to get payments accepted in a more functional fashion is the backbone to any good eCommerce business – and it is where most eCommerce merchants are facing their biggest checkout abandonment problem today. Having a flexible and adaptable payment provider that utilizes intelligent payment routing can help reduce failover is a key step towards ensuring your eCommerce site doesn’t miss out on sales.

If you are an eCommerce merchant and you haven’t taken the Checkout Conversion Calculator, you should check it out. Though we’ve given some averages and data above, you’ll never know what real checkout abandonment problem you’re facing if you don’t. The Calculator will identify your personal points of friction and help you figure out what you need to fix to avoid the checkout abandonment problem. Take the Calculator today to help your eCommerce site capture more sales:

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