Customers Are Leaving Your Online Shopping Cart
Recent research by the Baymard Institute found that up to 69% of customers were leaving your online shopping cart instead of buying your product or service.
They also found that 35% of those online abandonments were recoverable solely through a better checkout flow and design – in other words most businesses are making things more complicated than they should be, and customers are leaving as a result.
Needless to say, keeping even a small portion of these abandoned orders would have a significant effect on your profit as a business. But the best part about it is that it makes sense, because I know I have been guilty of leaving a complicated shopping cart, and there’s a good chance you have too.
Fast and Easy, or Long and Complicated, Which Would You Prefer?
If you had a choice between your checkout experience being fast and easy, or long and complicated, which would you choose? It might seem like a silly question – even an obvious one – when we put it like that, but the truth is most companies are answering “Long and Complicated” without even knowing it.
They’re answering “Long and Complicated” because they haven’t put in the work or thinking necessary to reduce the complexity in their shopping cart and make it as simple as it needs to be. And they haven’t put in the thinking because they don’t have a simple step-by-step framework like the Lean CX Score that is proven to make it simple and improve their profit as a result.
Reduce The Steps, Reduce The Checkout Fields
The latest research by the Baymard Institute found that the average online shopping cart had more than 14 form fields for a customer to fill out. But the shocking thing is they also found that the ideal customer flow included just seven form fields – around half of what most companies had.
Companies were making it more complicated than it needed to be, which prompted a reduction of 35% of customers in buying their product or service.
Amazon Did It In One Step
Of course you know the story by now – there’e a good chance you have used Amazon.com’s online shopping cart and in many cases, such as with their prime service or Kindle store, you can buy what you want in just one click. If customers leave too often with 14 fields, and a checkout can be done in 7, then Amazon have taken it to the next level and reduced the steps to one.
Do you think that had an effect on their profit? Of course.
Doing things in “One Step” is also one of the recommendations in “The Lean CX Score”, by David McLachlan. In that book there are many more real life examples of companies getting things to a customer in “One Step” instead of many, and gaining stellar results.
There are also five scenarios similar to the “too many fields” dilemma, where customers are prompted to leave a company. Outlined in the “The Lean CX Score”, they are scenarios where a customer leaves because their experience is harder than it needed to be. Apart from extra steps, it might mean extra hand-offs, having to redo things over and over, and having to wait too long to get what they wanted.
If you haven’t read The Lean CX Score yet, I highly recommend you get a copy today.
Get "The Lean CX Score" now, and start creating disruptors in your industry that completely annihilate your competition. Oh and good news! You'll be improving the speed, morale and engagement of your teams at the same time. Get the Lean CX Score now.