Cart abandonment is one of the biggest factors that can drastically affect the sales and success of your WooCommerce store.

Imagine this: Your traffic is high, your customers are drawn to your products, and they love them. You think it’s time to sit back and watch the sales go up, right? Well, maybe not! 

There might be something that’s stealing away your sales. The thief in question is shopping cart abandonment.

Ecommerce stores lose up to $18 billion a year because of cart abandonment. In fact, the shopping cart abandonment rate across various industries is as high as nearly 70%.

This is a troubling figure, so let’s improve it!

In this article, we’ll look at why you might be experiencing cart abandonment in your WooCommerce store. We’ll then share with you some solutions to fix it. Finally, we’ll talk about how you can recover an abandoned cart in WooCommerce to boost your sales

Want to get right to it? Get the WooCommerce plugins in this article with the Iconic WooCommerce Conversions Bundle.

WooCommerce Conversions Bundle

Increase your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate and watch your revenue skyrocket. Includes Iconic Sales Booster, Flux Checkout, and WooThumbs.

But first, let’s address what cart abandonment is.

What is cart abandonment?

Cart abandonment happens when a buyer visits your WooCommerce store, adds one or more products to their shopping cart, and leaves your store without making a purchase.

The items in the cart are unpurchased, and the cart is left abandoned. 

It’s a major challenge for WooCommerce store owners because it decreases sales and revenue. It means there might be some factors throughout the buyer’s journey, causing them to not go through with purchasing your products.

We’ll explore each of these below (with some solutions).

Reasons for WooCommerce cart abandonment

There are plenty of reasons why your customers might not be following through with their purchases, as shown below.

We’ll go through some of these in more detail, with some pointers to help you prevent them.

Problem #1: Poor checkout experience 

A poor checkout experience is one of the most obvious reasons for an abandoned cart in WooCommerce.

Your audience prefers their online shopping experience to be fast, convenient, and fuss-free. Unfortunately, many customers get irritated, frustrated, and tired of seeing lengthy checkout forms. 

Standard WooCommerce checkout
The standard WooCommerce checkout

First-time users can also find it tough to understand a complicated checkout process and leave the site without purchasing. According to Baymard Institute data, a whopping 18% of the users abandon their carts because of long and complicated forms and formalities. 

But what if you don’t have any coding knowledge or simply don’t know how to simplify your checkout?

How to fix a poor checkout page experience

You can use a WordPress plugin to fix a lengthy and complicated checkout experience, especially if you have no coding knowledge or want a quick solution.

Specifically, we recommend Flux Checkout for WooCommerce

Flux Checkout simplifies the checkout process by creating a step-by-step, multi-page checkout. The layout is easy for customers to understand, is distraction-free, and super fast – helping them checkout with ease.

Flux Checkout Modern
Flux Checkout Modern

Flux reduces the number of fields customers need to enter while giving the store owner everything they need to fulfill the order. It uses address autocomplete, which converts your multiple lengthy address lookup fields into a single field.

By getting rid of the excess and speeding your checkout up, Flux will effortlessly reduce cart abandonment.

Flux Checkout for WooCommerce

Prevent abandoned carts with a slick multi-step checkout experience, designed for your customer’s device.

Problem #2: Lack of an easy-to-use guest checkout

In a standard WooCommerce store, the guest checkout option can be hard to find. Either that, or it simply isn’t there, forcing customers to sign up to continue checking out. This additional step alone can result in cart abandonment for your WooCommerce store. 

According to Baymard Institute, a shocking 24% of users leave their carts because they have to sign up for an account. Entering personal data such as their email address, phone number, creating a password, and passing a security check is tiring and a big turn-off for some customers (especially if it’s a one-time purchase).

So how do we solve this problem?

How to fix your guest checkout

Of course, including a quick and convenient guest checkout instead of the sign-up prompt on your WooCommerce store will immediately solve this. 

Guests see everything on one page when presented with a standard WooCommerce checkout. This process is overwhelming and confusing for someone who simply wants to checkout quickly and without fuss.

With Flux Checkout, you can allow customers to proceed through the checkout process without creating an account and make the experience even easier with its step-by-step process.

address autocomplete woocommerce

A guest checkout will also empower customers to make one-time purchases without going through the long and boring task of recovering a forgotten password. 

According to research, nearly 60% of users have difficulty finding the guest checkout option. So make sure it is clear and visible to your customers. 

Flux Checkout for WooCommerce

Prevent abandoned carts with a slick multi-step checkout experience, designed for your customer’s device.

Problem #3: High shipping costs

Imagine your customers adding up product prices in their cart only to be taken aback by that super pocket-heavy shipping cost later. The result – is an abandoned cart in WooCommerce.

According to recent data, high shipping costs make up 44% of the top reasons for cart abandonment. Plus, 56% of users abandon their carts because of unforeseen shipping costs, according to Statista

Apart from making you lose potential sales, high and unexpected shipping costs can make customers irritated.

But what if you can’t lower your shipping costs? What can you do to soften the blow?

How to fix high shipping costs

The plugin Sales Booster for WooCommerce can fix this by helping you create lucrative discounts and offers at the checkout to make the high shipping costs a little more pleasant. 

One of its features allows you to display a one-time offer based on the cart’s contents at the time of checkout. By adding a highly customized offer in this location, you’ll not only soften the blow but potentially increase your average order value at the same time.

Iconic Sales Booster Order Bump
Offer at the checkout created with Sales Booster for WooCommerce

Not only this, but Sales Booster also allows you to display ‘frequently bought together‘ products on the product page and ‘customer also bought’ products after they’ve added something to their cart. 

All of these features together will indicate to customers that they’re getting a great deal, so your shipping costs won’t seem quite so harsh.

Iconic Sales Booster for WooCommerce

Use proven cross-selling techniques to increase the average order value of your store.

Problem #4: Unclear shipping dates

Delivery time plays a significant role in producing abandoned carts. WooCommerce customers can get frustrated because of the unclear shipping dates. Think of important occasions they can’t afford to miss like birthdays, anniversaries, festivals, etc. What would they do if your product has no clear delivery date? 

They would probably move to your competitor’s products that have detailed delivery or shipment details

So if we know customers get frustrated with the lack of clarity around shipping dates, how can we solve it?

How to fix unclear shipping dates

The plugin WooCommerce Delivery Slots will help you optimize WooCommerce and overcome this problem hassle-free. It enables your customers to pick a pickup or delivery date/time at the checkout. 

delivery slots checkout
Delivery date and time created with WooCommerce Delivery Slots

The times and dates your customers pick from will be highly customized and set by you. You can change everything from how many orders you’ll take, if you’ll do same-day or next-day delivery, and more. You can even set dates for special occasions and make as many restrictions as you like.

Your customers can even reserve a delivery slot and shop more without worrying about the unavailability of desired slots. 

WooCommerce Delivery Slots

Choose a delivery date and time for each order. Add a limit to the number of allowed reservations, restrict time slots to specific delivery methods, and so much more.

Problem #5: Too few/complicated payment options

Inconvenient payment options have always triggered cart abandonment in WooCommerce. When you open up a store using WooCommerce, most of the time, customers are using a wide variety of different payment methods.

This can change depending on which payment method they find the most trustworthy, convenient, safe, or easy to use.

So a single payment option likely won’t be sufficient. In fact, according to Baymard Institute, around 7% of shoppers leave their carts because of insufficient payment options. 

So what’s the solution?

How to fix your payment options

We recommend opting for acceptable payment methods in all countries, which are frequently used by most people. PayPal and Stripe are the most common modes and offer their services to a wide range of audiences. You can also try to include Razor Pay, Google Pay, Pay U, and Amazon Pay.

woocommerce payment methods

If that’s not enough, you can set up various debit and credit cards and cash-on-delivery options. WooCommerce offers a wide range of payment extensions you can set up in your online store. 

Okay, so we’ve talked about why abandoned carts happen and some solutions. But what if you’re still having trouble? How can you recover those abandoned carts?

WooCommerce abandoned cart recovery

With a standard WooCommerce store, you’ll have to manually recover lost sales or abandoned orders. Either that or those sales are completely lost. Following up with customers may not be an option, and finding the time to get in touch is out of the question.

So, to tackle the challenges of cart abandonment, we recommend using the abandoned cart recovery plugin, Abandoned Cart Recovery for WooCommerce. It helps you turn your abandoned carts into purchase orders by creating and sending regular follow-up cart abandonment emails to your customers. 

The plugin increases sales with customizable automated emails with discount coupons and other lucrative offers to lure your visitors into buying. You’ll be able to put emails together using email templates or create custom ones to suit your store.

The built-in analytic dashboard also helps track your recovery email notifications performance.

Abandoned Cart statistics from Abandoned Cart Recovery
Abandoned Cart statistics from Abandoned Cart Recovery

Apart from that, the abandoned cart recovery emails enable users to visit their cart page instantly for easy checkout. It gives a direct link to the cart with the added products so that customers can reach it within one click.

So if you’re looking for WooCommerce cart abandonment recovery, the plugin Abandoned Cart Recovery won’t steer you wrong.

The plugin also helps capture the emails of guest users/potential customers. So, it helps in increasing and updating your mailing list for future email campaigns.

Reduce your abandoned carts today!

The data we’ve shared from the Baynard institute is incredibly valuable, but more importantly, it’s actionable. If you stake steps to address each of these issues in your cart today, you’ll start to see better conversion rates.

It might sound like a lot of work, so how can you achieve all of these results? The best way to do this effectively is with our IconicWP Conversions Bundle.

WooCommerce Conversions Bundle

Increase your WooCommerce store’s conversion rate and watch your revenue skyrocket. Includes Iconic Sales Booster, Flux Checkout, and WooThumbs.

The Conversions Bundle comes with our powerful plugins Flux Checkout, Sales Booster, and WooThumbs. Buying the Bundle will save you 40% and help you address most of these issues. 

But even better, our ‘All Access Pass’ will get you all of our WooCommerce plugins so you can create the most intuitive and conversion-oriented ecommerce experience on your website today.

Get the All Access Pass

Get all 14 Iconic plugins plus every plugin we make in the future. Increase conversions, optimize your store, and get access to special discounts and offers.

The WooCommerce extensions mentioned in this guide:

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