"Abandoned shopping cart" is a term used when a customer who intends to make an online purchase does not complete the checkout process.

There are many reasons why customers decide to abandon their shopping carts, and you must take these into consideration as an e-tailer. By ignoring the possibility of abandoned carts, you could lose over 66% of your customers' purchases.

Why should I know this?

1. 67% of carts are abandoned before the transactions are made.
2. 55% abandon carts because of shipping costs.
3. 38% abandon carts if delivery time is more than 8 days.
4. The rate of abandonment is increasing as more customers become aware of online shopping. In 2006, 52% of carts were abandoned, on average, but by the end of 2012, the rate reached 67%.

How to solve the issue of abandonment:

The design of your checkout page in particular can have a huge role in motivating your customers to complete a checkou. Tracking the rate of cart abandonment will also help you detect the problems your store is facing. If the rate is high, you can study your checkout page, compare it to other online stores, contact the web designer and advise on a redesign to overcome the problem. 

Another option is also to contact your customers with incomplete orders via email to remind them about remaining items, potentially saying something like,

“Dear Customer, you are receiving this e-mail because we have noticed that the order you have started was not complete. If you have abandoned your cart by choice, we would like to know the reasons in order to help us avoid this issue. Thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.”

Surveying your users may help; at least getting new customers to return to the site can increase the chance of getting a second sale by 300%. 

You can also use to Google Analytics to track your customer behavior and determine the culprit for an unusually high rate of abandoned carts. Stay tuned for more on that topic.