There are many strategies online retail businesses can implement to minimise the amount of people who aren’t checking out. With so many people shopping wherever and whenever it is convenient for them, it’s even more important to enhance your online store to increase your revenue and improve the overall customer purchase experience. Here are two strategies to implement in order to minimise purchase barriers, reduce friction and get your customers over the finish line.
Incentives
We’ve all been guilty of filling up a shopping cart but not going through with the transaction. In fact, around 37% of shoppers will abandon a cart because they were just browsing. So how do you move customers from the curious to the completion stage? Offering customer incentives to sweeten the deal will catch them in the buying mind frame to help get them over the finish line.
The first incentive to look at is offering a discount. If products have been sitting in a cart for an extended period of time, create a pop-up that offers a 5% discount for transactions completed that day. This discount is small enough to not affect your sales, but enough to spark someone to complete the transaction that day. Attaching an expiry time to this discount will also create a sense of urgency.
The second incentive to look at is offering free or discount shipping. Studies show that 56% of people turn away after seeing unexpected costs such as shipping. Absorbing as much of this charge as you can will help with transaction completions. If you can’t remove the cost completely, try lowering the cost or offering free shipping over a certain price to increase sale completions.
Upsells
Another strategy to increase sales revenue is to offer some product recommendations during their purchase. We’ve all been sucked into the last minute chocolate bar at the supermarket checkout bay and online upsells are no different. Implementing a product upsell tailored to the products already selected can be an incredibly successful way to make extra dollars at the checkout with product recommendations being responsible for an average of 10-30% of e-commerce revenues.
There are important characteristics to keep in mind when creating product upsells to ensure it is an effective use of this strategy. When choosing upsell products to display, avoid suggesting products that are high in price. You don’t want to offer something that will make customers sweat over the price and the checkout is not the place to be informing them of the latest $200 Nike Air Max (however fire they may be). The product needs to be something that can spark a quick decision.
Familiarity also needs to be considered when creating product upsells. Introducing unfamiliar products to customers might only confuse them and distract them from purchasing all together. The greater familiarity your customer has with the add-on item, the more likely they are to buy.
When implementing any e-commerce strategies, make sure you don’t overdo it. If you are offering product after product, you will do more damage than good and look to desperate for that extra sale. Don’t overwhelm them!
If you would like to implement some of these strategies or improve your customer purchase journey, get in touch. We’d love to hear from you.