Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment on Your Website Using Live Chat Software

How many times has it happened that you’re on an online store, you put what you need in the cart and after reaching to the final checkout stage, you realize the price of your item just doubled because of shipping, taxes and packaging? EVERY TIME!

I have gone through the same like a gazillion times, where I would put a lot of guitar accessories in the cart and everything just becomes “insanely” expensive by the end of this magic tunnel called “checkout”. Some of you may blame it on Gandalf, but I honestly think the problem lies in the way the online store is working.

The Salescycle remarketing report and many other studies show that the average rate of cart abandonment is nearly 67.71 %, which means the majority is not happy with the way ecommerce stores work. In simple words, ecommerce customer service needs to fine-tune with the demands of the clients.

Every abandoned cart has its reasons and we are going to discuss the most popular ones and how to deal with them. You won’t believe how many cart abandonments you can prevent with the implemention of live chat’s right application. Let’s get cracking!

Customer type – 1

Budget Shoppers

These shoppers have a limited budget and when they come to the checkout stage and see their bill just doubled, it becomes a major setback. This is why I and numerous others have abandoned carts on several occasions. The sudden lift in the price may happen due to shipping rates, taxes, packaging or any other reason. But it completely puts off the customer and there is a 90% chance that you will get an abandoned cart.

Solution:

• Using the best live chat software for your website, you can reduce these rates. First of all, do not keep such shocking surprises in your sales funnel. Try to be transparent to your customers and provide them with information on the website about any packaging or shipping cost that may add up later during the checkout.

  Related Article: What is the Importance of Using a Live Chat Software on Business Website

• Engage the customer in a conversation by inviting him/her to chat. It is also important to be personal, so that it doesn’t seem that the invite is just a robotic thing. A casual and personal opening can get the job done:

             “Hey! My name is Sam, it seems that you are having trouble in finding the right  color for this jacket. If you want, I can go through our stocks and check if you are looking for a specific color or else, we would be happy to arrange it!”

• Try to put invites on specific pages, where you feel the customer is lost or there are more chances of abandonment. It can be on items page, home page or even during the checkout procedure.

Customer type – 2

Window Shoppers

We all are guilty of this action, aren’t we? Window shopping is fun! It has become even more fun since online shopping has boomed on the Internet. You can window shop all you want without any store person staring at you. But with live chat services, you can monitor customer activities.

Window shoppers always go till the checkout procedure to see what will be the final amount they would have to pay. Not surprisingly, window shoppers largely contribute to abandoned carts. Here’s how you can deal with them.

Solution:

• The combination of features like visitor monitor and chat greetings can turn out to be very effective for such impatient customers. With the use of both the features, you can identify the visitor’s browsing pattern and initiate a conversation in strategic moments to avoid challenges such as cart abandonment.

• Another way to help them change their mind is by saving their cart. So, everytime they come back, they would find their products in the cart ready to be purchased. Saving the details of such customers with live chat and engaging them with a better scheme on their return can also increase the conversion rates of window shoppers.

• If there are some particular window shoppers that keep returning and don’t buy anything, then you can try to attract them by offering free or flat shipping, buy one get one free or any exclusive offers.

Customer type – 3

The “Comparison” Shoppers

Another common reason of abandoned carts is when somebody gets a better deal on the product from somewhere else. With billions of websites and millions of competitors, it is very difficult to keep up with what other websites are offering. A lot of such shoppers would compare a lot of websites and would obviously go for the one that is offering the best deal. But with the right application of live chat software for eCommerce websites, you can easily turn such odds into your favor.

Solution:

• Determining a “Comparison” shopper is very easy. A shopper like this would always know what he/she needs to buy, so such shoppers would not browse on your website and would rather search for the product they are looking for.

• Engaging such visitors with delighting offers can easily increase the chances of converting such visitors. Use pop-ups with deals that you may not offer generally. Doing so will not only get you a sale but you will also gain a promoter who would recommend you to many other people. Such shoppers value their money and are considered great for spreading word of mouth.

• Another benefit you can gather from such shoppers is their valuable feedback while chatting with them. Ask them about what other websites they like to shop from and their personal experiences, which will directly tell you about your unknown competitors and their marketing and selling strategies. This can drastically affect your business plans and goals.

Customer type – 4

Impatient Shoppers

Even though online shopping and ecommerce is a luxury, but there are a lot of shoppers who get impatient when shopping online. This category may include people who are not very tech savvy; generally impatient people who have a hard time trying to find out what they really want. Such people may get frustrated and leave the cart before completing their list.

Solution:

• Features like co-browsing are effective in such situations. You can use co-browsing to help customers navigate through the website and help them find what they need to buy.

• A lot of time, impatient customers abandon their carts because of no assistance in resolving their basic questions like refund policies, availability of different color or size and so on. So, inviting customers to chat and just having a conversation is always good, even if the customer is not facing any trouble. Such initiatives ensure customers that there is somebody they can always fall back on, if they have any doubts.

• Some customers may also get impatient if there is a bug or an issue in the checkout procedure. So, sticking with the customer during such situations will always result in better conversions.

Summing it up, these are the most common scenarios or customers who are likely to abandon carts. With the application of live chat, you can easily reduce the rate of abandoned carts. Not just that, you can also gather leads, feedback and reduce bounce rates on your website. But for that, you need skilled customer support reps who are proactive enough to apply features of the live chat for ecommerce website in the right direction and understand customer behavior onsite.

You can check out my post on how to build such customer support if you need a fresh perspective on this subject. Using these ideas can certainly reduce the abandonment rates on your ecommerce website.