Shopping Cart Abandonment
– Build Trust

So far in the series “Shopping Cart Abandonment” we have looked at ideas to help you reduce shopping cart abandonment under categories blog 1 – Right Infrastructure Helps, blog 2 – Give Your Customers Everything they Need, blog 3 – Stay Competitive and blog 4 – Make Shopping Convenient. In this blog we will look at how building trust can help you reducing shopping cart abandonment.

• Eliminate Hidden Charges

Online shoppers hate surprise charges. Buyers in most cases start with a budget, consciously or subconsciously, and add products to cart based on that. When they reach the checkout stage they will be in for a surprise if their total bill goes beyond what they had budgeted for. Even if the increase in cost can be attributed to legitimate heads like sales tax, shipping charges, etc. buyers get annoyed when these charges are revealed to them during checkout. It is best if these hidden charges are revealed to them as soon as possible. One possible way to do that is by offering a calculator or estimator within the shopping cart which will help the customer have a prior idea of what they might have to pay in total for their purchase.

• Show Customer Reviews and Ratings

Customer reviews and ratings are proven sales drivers and many studies have revealed that more than 60% of customers read online reviews before making a decision. If the individual ratings and reviews for a product appear during the checkout process, it influences the customer to buy it rather than abandoning the cart.

•  Build Trust with Trust Symbols

Trust symbols are known to instill confidence among online customers; if your customer is a first timer to your site and is going through a checkout process he/she might be vary of sharing payment details on your site if he/she is not sure if this information will be secure and will not be misused. When in doubt they will almost always abandon your shopping cart. But how do you earn their trust? Trust symbols come in handy at such times. But it is important to remember that different trust symbols serve different purposes. Some inform consumers that their transaction is secure (VeriSign, GeoTrust, Comodo), some inform them that the site is free from vulnerabilities (McAfee Secure, SecurityMetrics, TrustWave), while others indicate that the site owner has met an external standard for privacy controls (TRUSTe).
In all our blogs of the series, including this one, we have looked at ideas to reduce shopping cart abandonment. But it does not end here; if after all your efforts you still witness shopping cart abandonment do not lose your heart, you can still recover from this situation. Stay tuned for our next blog, the final blog of the series, where we will look at ideas that businesses can adopt to convert their abandoned shopping carts to successful orders.