3 Keys to Move Consumers Through Checkout and Decrease Cart Abandonment

In today’s connected consumer era, eCommerce is more competitive than ever before. Modern consumers are so bombarded with advertisements and marketing messages that before they can checkout of one website they have already been retargeted with better deals via mobile, social and digital channels.

Marketers must fight harder than ever to cut through the noise and move consumers through the purchase funnel. In fact, major analyst studies conducted over recent years have recorded an accumulative shopping cart abandonment rate of over 67% (Baymard). Sound familiar? Don’t stress – here are 3 key strategies to help drive consumers all the way from first visit to order confirmation.

Make search social.

Conversion starts with discovery, and search engines like Google are increasingly incorporating social data into their search rank algorithms. Start by beefing up your presence across social networks like LinkedIn and Google+ to increase your search ranking. Adding social sharing buttons across web properties not only helps with rankings by boosting content syndication, but search pages like Bing are also highlighting search terms in posts from users’ social connections in an effort to surface more relevant results. 91% of eCommerce retailers have reported seeing a lift in their SEO rankings thanks to social referrals (ShopSocially).

Relevant, quality user generated content improves long-tail SEO by putting your product or service in terms used by your customers, improving searchability and keyword discovery. Implement comments or ratings and reviews on your site or app to encourage valuable user feedback. Websites that feature ratings and reviews typically experience a 10-20% increase in CTR (Inchoo)!

Keep it clean and simple.

In an age where the answer to nearly every question is on the other side of a search bar, purchases are made with the swipe of a card and brands are merely a tweet away, no one is going to go the extra mile to navigate your site and figure out how to make a purchase. Not only should site navigation be direct, browsing simple and checkout clean, but there is no faster way to turn consumers away from your web properties than by offering a complex or lengthy registration process.

Clearly display login fields and options on your homepage, and ask only for the information necessary to provide users with a superior site experience. Social login is proven to increase user acquisition by an average of 33% (Gigya) by allowing users to register with the click of a button via their existing social media accounts. Enabling consumers to login via payment providers like Amazon or PayPal also powers the ability to gain permission-based access to users’ stored payment information to pre-populate checkout field.

Know Your Customers

It’s a no-brainer – consumers are more likely to purchase items that speak to their individual needs and interests. Yet brands continue to rely solely on generic and often inaccurate 3rd party data to reach customers. According to IBM, poor data can cost businesses 20-30% of their operating revenue, so making sure that your user data is accurate and up-to-date is critical to achieving marketing success and driving consumers to convert.

40% of consumers buy more from retailers who personalize the shopping experience (Monetate), and leads who are nurtured with targeted content produce a 20% increase in sales opportunities (DemandGen). Collecting and leveraging your 1st party data can be the difference between providing consumers with highly relevant experiences that keep them engaged all the way through the checkout process, and mass shopping cart abandonment.

Effectively and continuously moving consumers from discovery through checkout is not easy. It requires a holistic strategy that spans the entire purchase funnel and must be continuously optimized. And of course, creating seamless, personalized user experiences hardly stops there: next stop, retention!

This is a Guest Post by Rachel Serpa who is a social media enthusiast, poetry lover and content marketing manager at Gigya. You can connect with her here on Google+