With the influx of more businesses into the eCommerce industry, cart abandonment is on the high side. So it's not surprising to discover that almost 70% of visitors are abandoning their carts. That translates to huge losses in marketing expenses, as well as lower conversion rates arising from an ever-reducing customer base.

In this article, we’ll delve into the problem of shopping cart abandonment and how you can use logistics to solve it.

Investigating the Cart Abandonment Issue

Let's begin by illustrating how cart abandonment works. A prospect gets on your eCommerce store and begins to add one item after another to their shopping cart. But as soon as it’s time for them to complete the checkout phase, they leave. They rather ditch their cart and exit your site.

That epitomizes the cart abandonment issue, and it's a big problem for many merchants today because they seem to be at loss on how to curb it. However, here at FenixCommerce, we believe that logistics is the principal cause of abandoned carts and can also be the solution. 

How does cart abandonment affect your brand?

While it might seem trivial for a customer to hop on your site and eventually leave without checking out, the effects could be far more adverse than you think. For starters, your conversion rate takes a hit because you just lost a customer. You also missed out on a golden opportunity to build a long-term buying-seller relationship with them.

Since the customer left the items in their cart before exiting your website, you could also lose out on a possible sale almost immediately because some other visitor may have wanted those products. But it doesn't just end there because you still lose the money and time spent in attracting visitors to your website through marketing campaigns. 

And it can get even worse because they could decide to head over to your competitor’s website the next time they want to buy a product. 

But what really leads buyers to abandon their carts and, in turn, cause you to incur such losses across various segments of your business? Let’s find out!

Why is Your Customer Abandoning Their Carts?

Let's get one thing out of the way, which is - many visitors simply aren’t ready to make a purchase. They might just be browsing through products that they crave until some more pressing matter comes along and yanks them off your website. 

Some other reasons why website visitors abandon their carts before or during checkout are covered in a Baymard Institute study as follows:

• Site timeouts
• Lack of clarity with total costs
• Absence of free shipping or exorbitant shipping cost
• Slow delivery and shipping

With these in mind, it’s okay to put in place measures that help you get around such problems and try to bring the shopper back to your site to complete their order. But such methods don't always help with cart abandonment. 

So it might interest you to know that there could be a better way to stop your potential customers from exiting your website in the first place and get them through checkout successfully. 

Remedying Cart Abandonment Through Logistics

Most of the problems that lead to cart abandonment can be summarized in one word – LOGISTICS. It encompasses all the issues that lead to low conversion rates, such as unclear delivery dates and prices as well as uncertain shipping costs and times. 

Consider 3 key ways that eCommerce brands can remedy the issue of cart abandonment through improvement in their logistics: 

1. Low-cost/free shipping

Conversion rates are taking a hit because of shipping costs because it discourages many shoppers from buying an item. And 9 in 10 customers affirm that free shipping influences their buying decision. Now’s the time to find a way to offer low-cost and free shipping options. You can start by getting customer opinions on your shipping provisions and also conduct an analysis to see whether they prefer discounts to free delivery. No matter what, however, customers still want you to deliver their packages faster in addition to free shipping. 

2. Fast shipping

Online buyers are in love with the Amazon-eBay-Walmart shipping style. That's because no one wants to wait forever to receive their package. Buyers want their orders delivered now. In fact, 25% of customers will abandon their carts if they can't find a “same-day” shipping option. To meet that demand, more retailers are now providing fast shipping. What should you do to keep up? Find and use a fulfillment provider that offers a competitive fast shipping program, then display it on your site. 

3. Clear and accurate delivery dates + order tracking

In this era, your product and checkout pages must provide accurate delivery date estimates, or your buyers will jump ship and move on to another website with more accurate dates. This is mostly true for customers looking to do holiday shopping or get gifts for their loved ones. Make sure your product/checkout pages display accurate delivery date estimates and don’t forget to provide product tracking services. 

The implication, therefore, is that eCommerce brands can greatly improve their logistics and reduce cart abandonment by investing in a solution that helps them display a range of shipping options, as well as accurate and real-time delivery dates, to customers when shopping on their site.

This is where FenixCommerce comes in. Fenix is an AI-powered (easy-to-deploy) software for eCommerce retailers that pools data across inventory, products, and carriers to come up with precise and accurate EDDs for every customer.

So whether your customers want to bypass shipping hassles, save on shipping costs, or do last-minute shopping, Fenix will cater to all of them in any logistical situation.

Evolve Your Logistics with Fenix

Cart abandonment is natural and sometimes inevitable. Now you know why you’re probably struggling with it, use Fenix today to make simple logistical changes by boosting delivery speed and cutting down on shipping fees. That will help you to reduce cart abandonment and trigger an increase in conversions. 

Want to see how it works? Request a free demo!