20 practical ways to reduce cart abandonment immediately

It starts promisingly enough: people visit your online store, browse your products, and add items to their carts…but then disappear without completing their purchase. It’s called shopping cart abandonment, and it’s more common than you think. 

In this article, we show you how to identify the most common problems with checkout flows, along with 20 practical ways to turn abandoned carts into new revenue. To make it easy, we’ve grouped these tactics into 5 critical themes: 

• Simplifying the user experience (UX)

• Increasing trust and transparency

• Empathizing with your shoppers

• Winning back cart abandoners

• Experimenting with advanced tactics

Simplifying the user experience

Make it easy; make it fast; make it smooth: these are the basics of a good ecommerce user experience. Don’t overlook these deceptively simple ways to reduce cart abandonment.

1. Reduce checkout steps

Every time a shopper has to click to another screen to make a purchase, they lose patience. 

Review your flow to answer one important question: how could you make it simpler?

From your shopping cart page, 3 screens are all you need for a tight multi-page checkout flow:

1. Add personal info + shipping details

2. Add payment information 

3. Review order + ‘Buy now’

Follow this with a confirmation screen to reassure your new customer, and you’ve got a simplified checkout flow that shoppers can complete in under a minute.

How to decrease checkout abandonment by 86% over breakfast

Andrew Haehn, Operations Director at ecommerce company Materials Market, has an unusual breakfast routine, which usually includes porridge or a smoothie and 20 minutes of watching session recordings (or replays). That’s how he first spotted the problem in their checkout process:

“I saw that people were just getting confused. It looked like there were too many steps in the process. We were asking people to do too much just to check out.”

Those insights led to a few simple tweaks to their checkout process that brought big business gains. The results:

• Before: 1 in 4 shoppers abandoned their shopping carts

• Now: only 1 in 25 customers leave their carts

With some new copy, a pop-over modal, and fewer steps, Andrew decreased the checkout drop rate

2. Limit the number of form fields

Here’s a good rule of thumb: if you don’t need it, don’t ask. Asking a shopper’s gender might be useful to understand your buyer personas, but it’s unnecessary to complete the checkout process. Remember, you can always send a demographics survey later to get to know your audience. 

Do this now:

• Review all form fields in your checkout flow

• Remove any fields that aren’t essential for completing a purchase

3. Eliminate unnecessary elements 

Trying to upsell customers with ‘popular items’ and nudging people to sign up for your newsletter are good tactics for your homepage or product pages, but keep these out of your checkout flow. Once people place items in their cart, use call-to-action (CTA) best practices to help people finish their order.

Do this now:

• Make sure all your CTAs move a buyer forward

• Eliminate any buttons, links, or pop-ups that may send a shopper off track

💡 Pro tip: use Contentsquare Heatmaps to quickly identify distracting elements in your checkout process. If you see users clicking in unwanted places, update your cart design to keep them focused on the checkout.

Contentsquare’s Heatmaps show you where users click, and don’t click, on a page

4. Design an intuitive checkout navigation 

You’ve likely applied conversion rate optimization (CRO) best practices to your ecommerce store, including clear and colorful CTA buttons. The same tactics apply to your checkout pages. Don’t make buyers search for where to click next. Instead, make the next step big, bright, and obvious.

Similarly, if there’s an error or missing information, your customer shouldn’t have to guess what’s blocking them. Whenever someone needs to fill out a required checkout field, it should be clear to them.

Do this now:

• Make all mandatory information fields clear

• Make ‘next step’ prompts and buttons bolder

• Highlight missing information with visible prompts or form field outlines

💡Pro tip: Contentsquare’s Heatmaps and Session Replay tools make it easy to diagnose potential navigation issues. 

• Replays let you watch users as they navigate your checkout, revealing how clearly your prompts point them to the next steps

• Heatmaps show where people click, including rage clicks when someone doesn’t realize they need to supply missing info

Together, they give you better, user-backed insights for creating a more intuitive checkout navigation with confidence.

5. Make it easy to edit a shopping cart

Some ecommerce stores ‘lock’ people into the checkout process once they're in their cart, making it difficult to remove or revise items already in their baskets. It’s a frustrating experience that inevitably leads to cart abandonment—and keeps shoppers from returning to your store. 

Do this now:

• Make it easy to eliminate an item added to the cart

• Provide the option to ‘go back to store’ or ‘continue shopping’

6. Offer a guest checkout option 

If you’ve ever been forced to create an account to make a single purchase, you know how unpleasant it can be. Like you, your prospective customer likely doesn’t care about speeding up future orders; they want to buy the item they want now. 

Offer buyers two options:

1. ‘Create an account’ to speed up future orders: with email, Google, or other social logins

2. ‘Guest checkout’ to speed up the current order with minimal info and steps

Lego offers two checkout options for new customers: ‘Register’ and ‘Continue as Guest’, plus a ‘Sign In’ option for returning customers

Increasing trust and transparency

One of the biggest reasons people decide not to buy from a new store is doubt. Is this site safe? When will my items arrive? What if I don’t like what I buy? 

The better you answer these questions up front, the more people will be willing to click ‘Buy now’.

7. Make your return policy clear

We strongly recommend offering a generous return policy (see next tip below). But more important is to make your return policy as clear as possible. When linking to a return policy page, it should open as a new window or a hover-over tooltip box, so it’s easy for shoppers to return to your checkout flow.

Answer these questions for your customer:

• Can I return unwanted items?

• How do I make a return? 

• How long do I have to make a return?

• Who pays for return shipping?

💡 Pro tip: not everyone will review your return policy. But those who do care a lot about what they find. Add a survey to make sure you’re answering shopper doubts in a way they’re happy with.

Launch a Contentsquare survey in seconds to gauge customer satisfaction 

8. Offer a 100% money-back guarantee

Some store owners fear that offering 100% money-back guarantee will lead to more returns—along with logistic and financial reporting hassles. But research shows that offering a full refund will net you more sales in the end. Again, it’s about trust. 

People are more compelled to buy when they know they won’t get stuck with something they don’t want. A money-back guarantee offers this peace of mind. This is especially important if you’re a newer ecommerce site attracting many first-time visitors.

💡Pro tip: if you’re unsure, give it a test. Add an explicit 100% money-back guarantee to your product pages and checkout flow for a set period. Then, monitor orders with and without the guarantee.   

1. Do you see a reduction in cart abandonment?

2. Do you see an increase in returned orders?

3. Do you see positive changes in your net revenue?

You could also set this up as an A/B test using Contentsquare to monitor how users react to your money-back guarantee (for more, scroll down to 18).

Note: if you’re unsure about calculating revenue and other ecommerce metrics, find out more about the ecommerce metrics you should be tracking.

9. Build trust with social signals

Who do you trust more?

1. A company promising you they’re amazing

2. A friend telling you a company is amazing

3. A thousand reviews saying a company is amazing

You may have picked 2 or 3, but we guarantee you didn’t pick 1. Whether word-of-mouth from friends and family, or overwhelmingly positive reviews from previous customers, buyers feel more confident with proof. 

To increase trust, add one or more of the following:

• Customer testimonials  

• Trustpilot rating 

• Secure-payment trust badge

• Validated security certificates

The stellar 4.8-star rating (and Nicholas A.’s recent purchase) assures Nectar shoppers they’re making a good choice

10. Make all costs transparent from the get-go

One of the fastest ways to lose a sale is to add unexpected costs at the register. Surprise costs and hidden fees make people feel duped, and this isn’t just bad for sales; it’s bad for your brand.

Ensure all costs—including taxes and shipping fees—are transparent from the start so your shoppers know exactly what they’re agreeing to.

💡Pro tip: if you’re unable to calculate shipping (or any other costs) up front, make it clear what costs will be added later. Set expectations; eliminate surprises.

11. Move the estimated delivery date before the checkout process

Imagine finally finding that perfect birthday present for your partner. Yes! You add it to your cart, fill in contact and shipping details, and only then find out it won’t arrive in time. No!

Like hidden costs, this is another unwelcome surprise that turns buyers away. In this case, it’s better to potentially deter a buyer earlier than disappoint them later.

Remember Andrew from Materials Market, whom you met above? They moved the estimated delivery date before their checkout process—an easy fix that helped add an extra £10,000 in annual revenue.

Materials Market’s checkout changes, including estimated delivery dates and Trustpilot reviews, tripled conversions

Empathizing with your shoppers

Improving your shopping cart abandonment rate starts with investigating what’s wrong. Who better to ask than the people whose opinions matter most: your customers? We’ve got the tactics to bring the voice-of-the-customer (VoC) insights into your decisions.

12. Experience your checkout through your users’ eyes

What if you could see what shoppers see as they walk through your checkout process? 

With session replays, you can. See where visitors get frustrated, spot site designs or errors that lead to distraction, and identify areas to improve to reduce cart abandonment.

💡Pro tip: use Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool to step into your customers’ shoes and discover areas that are causing any frustration or rage clicks during the checkout process. This helps you pinpoint what prevents users from checking out.

Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool lets you see where your users are getting frustrated

13. Ask customers what’s missing with an exit-intent survey

A visitor lands on your ecommerce store and adds an item to their cart but leaves before buying. Now imagine if you could tap them on the shoulder and ask: “Why are you leaving? What could we have done better?”

With an exit-intent survey, you can.

One survey to decrease cart abandonment and triple conversions

Tomasz Lisiecki’s agency, NerdCow, had an ecommerce client with unusually low conversion rates. Session replays revealed many people abandoning their shopping carts. 

Rather than rely on hunches or guesses, he then used surveys to ask visitors directly: what stopped you from buying?

The reason? They forgot! This led to a simple email and website reminder that nearly tripled conversions in just two weeks.

A Contentsquare exit survey lets you capture live feedback before a visitor leaves your site

14. Get in-depth feedback from all the right people

Your ecommerce analytics reveals a lot about what’s happening on your online store. But sometimes, you need a broader set of eyes to identify soft spots in your checkout experience. 

This is where Contentsquare’s Interviews tool helps. It helps you streamline user testing by letting you invite your own users to give feedback (you can also borrow Contentsquare’s pool of over 200,000 testers if needed).

Run user interviews if you:

• Introduce a new checkout flow and need to ensure it’s easy, clear, and makes people feel secure

• Need additional insights to improve your existing flow

Winning back cart abandoners

You’ve simplified your flows, made costs and delivery dates transparent, added elements of trust, and—ta-da—more people are now finishing your ecommerce checkout. But as for the people who’ve already left, there are ways to get them back, too.

15. Use email marketing to bring people back 

It’s a familiar story: someone adds a desired item to their cart, then gets distracted by one of life’s demands and doesn’t complete the process. The solution could be as simple as sending them a gentle email reminder. 

Far from an annoyance, your reminder may make someone’s day. According to Bigcommerce, cart abandonment emails have a 41% open rate—which means your prospects are happy to see you and more likely to return to finish that purchase. 

Best practices for abandoned cart email sequences:

1. Provide a clear summary of abandoned items

2. Add a clear CTA button or link 

3. Include customer testimonials or reviews if relevant

4. Test different subject lines

5. Send multiple email reminders (2-4 seems to be the sweet spot)

16. Launch retargeting campaigns

Retargeting ads show people the products they’ve viewed on your store, including items they’ve added to their carts. With help from platforms like Google Ads or Facebook, you can use retargeting ads to reduce cart abandonment by 6.5% and increase sales by as much as 20%. 

It works because your ads are seen by people who’ve already shown intention to buy, so you stay top-of-mind with an interested audience.

Experimenting with advanced tactics

According to Baymard Institute, the average cart abandonment rate sits at 70%, so we suggest starting with the above recommendations. But once you’ve covered the basics, there are a few more tactics to try. The best news: while these ideas are more advanced, most of them are fairly straightforward to implement.

17. Add live chat to relieve last-second doubts

Have you ever had a quick question about a product before buying? The better you assuage a shopper’s doubts, the happier they'll be to hand you their Visa car-, er, trust. Live chat is one option that provides the instant comfort buyers need to finish their purchase.

❗️Warning: live chat can be a useful channel, but it’s also a big commitment, especially for small stores. Before adding live chat, test it on a small cohort of buyers to make sure you have the bandwidth to keep up with potential demand.

18. A/B test shopping cart hypotheses

Does adding a testimonial increase confidence or add distraction? Does allowing users to leave their checkout and continue shopping increase or decrease cart abandonment?

Some questions can only be answered by testing. If a potentially big payoff comes with substantial risk, you might want to invest in an A/B test comparing variant A (your original design) to variant B (your—hopefully!—improved version).

Some elements to test:

• CTA button placement and color

• Copy variations, e.g. ‘Checkout now’ vs. ‘Secure checkout’

• Adding customer testimonials

• Offering a guest checkout option

💡 Pro tip: A/B testing + session replays = deep insights

Pair A/B tests with Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool to discover why a variant converts better and how users work through each flow, so you can pinpoint pain points and get new insights to improve ecommerce conversions. 

19. Optimize your site’s performance 

Three seconds: if your pages take longer than that to load, you’re bleeding sales. There are a few ways to test page speed:

• Using web monitoring solutions like Contentsquare’s Speed Analysis tool, which lets you track page speed and see how it affect conversions, bounce rate, and other business outcomes

• From the perspective of real users, with Contentsquare’s Session Replay tool

Contentsquare’s Speed Analysis tool lets you track page load times and performance metrics

Page speed also influences how Google ranks your site in Search, so the benefits of optimizing speed go way beyond your cart. And once you’ve got page speed under control, be sure to tick off the rest of the website optimization checklist.

20. Add cart recovery plugins to your ecommerce site

If your ecommerce store is on Shopify or WooCommerce, you’ve got another set of options: cart recovery plugins. They reduce shopping cart abandonment by sending automatic reminders to people who’ve abandoned their carts.

Shopify alone offers hundreds of different abandoned cart apps, and many are free.

The sale starts long before clicking ‘Add to cart’

An abandoned shopping cart is a great sign: it means you’ve got people to your ecommerce site, and they’ve found something of interest. That’s the hardest part for many online stores. 

And now you’ve got 20 new ways to push that abandonment rate down—from simplified checkout flows and signs of social proof to new tools that put you in your customers’ shoes.

But remember that a successful ecommerce business is more than just a well-oiled shopping cart. A sale begins when a customer first hears about your brand—and it continues through a buttery-smooth shopper experience that ends in a happy customer owning a product they adore.

FAQs about shopping cart abandonment