Cart abandonment: reduce friction at your checkout with alternative payment methods

Despite the growth in online spending over the last few years, cart abandonment continues to be a challenge for merchants. With more choice and greater access to international brands, even the slightest bit of friction can cause a customer to leave mid-purchase.

With consumer expectations continuing to grow, it has never been so critical to attract and retain online shoppers. By offering a high-quality e-commerce experience and an enhanced customer journey merchant can mitigate the challenge of cart abandonment and retain consumer energy and enthusiasm through to conversion.

Recent studies highlight that the average cart abandonment rate is 69.82% (Baymard). There are many factors which influence a decision to abandon the shopping cart, from technical challenges, poor page load speed and competitive offers on alternative sites; however, one area often overlooked is payments.

Payments are a critical part of the e-commerce journey and a complicated payment process, unreliable checkout page or limited choice of payment methods are prime for increasing cart abandonment amongst your customers. Despite all your efforts in pushing them through sales and marketing activity, utilising point of sale and loyalty campaigns, the checkout is the most crucial point of all. Failing to convince engaged shoppers to convert into a purchase is a huge lost opportunity for online retailers.

Understanding why online shoppers abandon their baskets

In March 2021 (Statista), almost 80% of online shopping orders were abandoned, which could have been down to savvier shoppers, long checkout journeys, intentions to browse online, lack of preferred payment methods available or a need for speed and convenience.

With the increase of digital spending, you would expect purchases to increase and to see a reduction in people abandoning their shopping cart. However, consumers are becoming much savvier when it comes to purchasing their products and services online. Alternative options are only a click away, and if the purchasing journey at any point does not meet their increasing expectations, they are likely to abandon their cart and look elsewhere.

Did you know it takes an average of 22 clicks for a customer to checkout online? (Retaildive)

One of the driving factors to reducing cart abandonment is a faster checkout process. With one-click orders and next day delivery, consumers nowadays desire speed and convenience in their shopping experience and the payment journey is no exception. If your payment journey takes too long for a customer, they can switch to a competitor with a shorter checkout process.

With greater digital transparency, consumers can compare their options online much easier and quicker. Those consumers choosing to purchase products in-store are less likely to compare their options, as it would take them much longer to go check out products in a variety of stores. However, when purchasing online, consumers can switch to competitors to compare on the factors that matter the most to them.

There are various reasons as to why a consumer could abandon their cart when they reach the payment stage, but they all underline the demand for online retailers to offer a fast and seamless payment journey for their customers, with a plethora of alternative payment methods. Merchants need to ensure that the entire experience is optimised, to mitigate the risk of losing trade.

Could increasing payment optionality improve cart abandonment?

With digital transactions, comes a greater array of payment flexibility and customers are relishing the wealth of choice now available. Bank card and cash payments are no longer dominating the payment landscape with consumers wanting more choice in their payment options. People are moving away from only using the traditional credit and debit cards and are demanding new payment methods such as e-wallets (Apple Pay and Google Pay), open banking and Buy Now Pay Later (Klarna and Clearpay).

44% of UK consumers stop a purchase if their favourite payment method is not available and 30% of UK customers admit that they rarely adopt new payment methods and prefer to stay with the payment methods they know (Techround). Ultimately as a merchant, if you do not offer the payment methods that your consumers desire, you are risking losing 44% of your customers, as they abandon their cart and with one-click are now purchasing from a competitor's website.

Your customers like familiarity and the payment journey is no different. Providing your customers with alternative payment methods makes for a smooth checkout experience and will decrease the chances of cart abandonment. Through offering alternative payment methods you are increasing customer satisfaction by reducing friction at the checkout. With alternative options just one click away, meeting the expectations increases customer satisfaction, reduces the likelihood of an abandoned cart and increases their loyalty to you.

Furthermore, this can impact your global expansion plans, with cart abandonment being a serious challenge across all international e-commerce outfits. The growth in the online space and new technologies is making it easier for merchants to sell across the globe. Offering alternative payment methods is still essential if you are looking to expand internationally, in order to meet the needs of a new market with access to local payment methods. Cart abandonment can happen globally if you are not offering payment methods to suit all markets.

Reduce friction at your checkout

Payment orchestration platforms, like BR-DGE, can support you and your customers wants and needs, by connecting you to over 100 payment providers and over 200 alternative payment methods, from e-wallets to card schemes and Buy Now Pay Later, with our single API integration.

With a wealth of payment providers and alternative payment methods at your fingertips at BR-DGE, you can give customers the experience they want, convert more baskets, and elevate revenue with payment optionality.

For more information on how BR-DGE can support you in reducing friction at the checkout with alternative payment methods, contact us today.