In 2013, as many as 74% of online shopping carts were abandoned by shoppers (Barilliance), Up from 72% in 2012, and 69% in 2011.
Generating leads through PPC marketing requires time, talent, and a PPC ad budget- elements which online retailers often squander if their site has high shopping cart abandonment.
Avoid lost PPC revenue by identifying where people are leaving your site, and addressing those issues. In the video below our Paid Search Director David Weichel highlights how to determine why shoppers are leaving the Shopping cart.
Two Easy Ways to Get Started with Shopping Cart Abandonment
Watch the video to learn two easy ways online retailers can identify where and why shoppers are leaving retailers’ shopping carts:
Identify Why Shoppers are Leaving the Cart
Retailers will lose roughly $4 trillion in abandoned cart conversion dollars this year (BI Intelligence), a number which is compounded when you look at PPC spend- money used to push shoppers to the shopping cart.
The first step to recovering lost profit from the shopping cart is understanding why people are leaving the cart.
1. Set Up Funnel Visualization in Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a invaluable tool for collecting performance data across your site. To track cart abandonment, create a custom Analytics goal which reflects each step in the checkout process (e.g. payment, shipping). Specify a custom step for every step in the checkout process – one for each step. Google compiles goal data in a report which will help you identify where shoppers are leaving your checkout.
2. Custom Event Tracker
Another easy way to analyze cart abandonment in Google Analytics is by using a Custom Event Tracker. The Event Tracker allows retailers to track and record all of the items added to the cart, in order to look at abandonment on a product level. Online sellers can track individual products (SKUs) to identify cart abandonment issues specific to products, or the online store. This is an effective report to springboard shopping cart testing.
Shopping Cart Abandonment Causes
Why are shoppers leaving the shopping cart?
Shopping cart abandonment rates vary on different sites, but many of the top reasons people leave the shopping cart are the same across sites.
Here are some of the major reasons shoppers abandon the cart:
97% of site visitors who add something to the cart never complete the transaction. Almost all of the people who visit your site don’t convert. Auditing why people leave the cart is a major lever to improve conversions for your online store.