Imagine the brilliance of this business goal-
An enticing holiday sale that lures a multitude of online shoppers to buy a number of products! If only they knew that by implementing an end-to-end intelligent test automation framework, they could have reduced their cart abandonment rate by a staggering 51%!
That’s right!
As reported by India Marketers, India witnessed a cart abandonment rate of approximately 51% in 2022. Comparatively, the global average for e-commerce cart abandonment was around 75%. For Unicorn/Soonicorn e-commerce businesses, these stats are haunting, as is the idea that if not taken care of, their desire to scale and become a market leader is as good as ruined. So what measures can e-commerce businesses take to avoid the black hole that has come to be known as ‘cart abandonment’ and ensure customers make it all the way through?
Before we explore the simple solutions that can put your business back on track, we must understand what influences customers to abandon their carts mid-shopping.
What is it and why does it happen?
Typically, cart abandonment happens when online shoppers add items to their virtual shopping bags but never complete the purchase by paying for them. This common challenge faced by e-commerce businesses usually spikes around the time of festivals and holiday seasons.
There are several reasons why cart abandonment occurs. Unexpected costs, such as high shipping fees or additional taxes, can deter customers from proceeding with their purchase. Complicated or lengthy checkout processes can frustrate users and lead them to abandon their carts. There can also be concerns about the security and trustworthiness of the website or payment process, which can discourage shoppers from completing the transaction. Additionally, comparison shopping, where customers add items to their cart for future reference or price comparison across different platforms, can also contribute to cart abandonment. Finally, distractions, interruptions, or simply changing one’s mind during shopping can result in abandonment.
Businesses can mitigate cart abandonment by optimising the checkout process, providing transparent pricing, building trust through secure payment options, and employing effective retargeting strategies to encourage customers to return and complete their purchases.
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How does QE play a role in mitigating cart abandonment?
Quality Engineering (QE) plays a critical role in mitigating cart abandonment by ensuring a seamless and positive experience throughout the customer’s e-commerce journey. With the data obtained, it is easy to learn at which point in their e-commerce journey customers abandon their carts. With this data, QE teams can focus on addressing the real reasons on why cart abandonment happens. By conducting rigorous tests and monitoring to optimise the website or application’s performance, functionality, and usability. QE helps improve the responsiveness and loading speed of the e-commerce platform, reducing potential frustrations for users. It also ensures the smooth functioning of the checkout process, eliminating bugs or errors that could hinder the completion of a purchase.
QE teams work on enhancing the overall user interface, making it intuitive, visually appealing, and easy to navigate. By proactively identifying and rectifying potential obstacles, QE helps build customer trust and confidence, minimising cart abandonment rates and increasing the likelihood of conversions. Ultimately, QE is crucial in creating a positive user experience that encourages customers to complete their purchases and fosters long-term customer satisfaction.
The key to reducing cart abandonment and recovering your business
Your web analytics say that your customers have hovered over the same few products for the past two weeks. They’ve selected their desired specs and added the items to their cart. They are halfway through the payment process when they suddenly abandon their cart. What do you do?
Sometimes customers are window shopping and are just in a wistful state of mind where they simply like to look at things. However, there are times when customers abandon their virtual shopping bags due to a bad user experience. These types of cart abandonments are easily fixable.
Having the right test automation framework or the right QE partner in place completely automates the application’s testing life cycle and ensures the e-commerce application functions seamlessly across different devices and browsers to ensure accessibility for customers. This also includes identifying and rectifying any issues before the application is ready to be used, such as slow loading times or glitches, and offering a quick and responsive user interface. The right test automation framework also checks the usability of the application by evaluating the interface, navigation, and overall user flow. By identifying potential pain points or areas of confusion, QE ensures an improved, optimised, intuitive, and user-friendly UI that is aesthetically pleasing.
QE emphasises security testing too, ensuring that customer data remains protected and the payment process is secure. This instils trust and confidence in users, making them more comfortable completing transactions on the platform. Additionally, QE continuously monitors and analyses user feedback and behaviour to gather insights and identify areas for enhancement. A QE partner helps create a positive and satisfying e-commerce user experience by proactively addressing issues and making iterative improvements, leading to increased customer engagement, conversions, and long-term loyalty.
Choosing Qapitol as your QE partner
Struggling with abandoned carts? You’re not the only one. E-commerce Unicorns and soon-to-be unicorns today struggle with getting customers to go all the way and buy the products in their cart. While there are several factors that businesses can’t control, delivering a top-quality application and a seamless user experience can ensure customers actually end up purchasing the products.
Qapitol provides end-to-end testing services and QE solutions that can help you make faster, high-quality product releases, ensuring reduced cart abandonment. Being in the testing market for almost ten years, we are the trusted QE partners of several top e-commerce companies, such as Flipkart and Myntra. We thoroughly learn and analyse your data to deliver digital quality assurance. From an expert resource pool to an end-to-end test automation framework, we offer you the precise value ingredients to enable a sustainable, bespoke QE strategy. Start battling cart abandonment the right way; talk to our QE experts today!