A high conversion rate reduces your cost of acquisition or sale (CPA), which is the major objective of all digital marketers

The initial purchase, trial activation, upsells, cross-sells, upgrades and subscription renewals all go through the Shopping Cart
Customer Lifetime Value goes beyond the purchase or acquisition, which is why is important to optimize the conversion rates of each stage of its life cycle. A very well-designed Shopping Cart not only helps increase conversion rates but also creates a memorable shopping experience and interaction with your brand, which improves their level of satisfaction and loyalty and extends their Lifetime value.
Establishing Baseline Values for Key Metrics
The first thing you should do is establish your starting point by defining the initial values of the metrics of:
- Cart Conversion Rate – # of orders split over # of unique visitors to the Shopping Cart
- Revenue per Visitor – Revenue divided by the # of unique visitors to the Shopping Cart
- Average Sales Value – Revenue divided by total # of orders
Shopping Cart Optimization
When a buyer reaches the Shopping Cart, they have most likely decided to buy your product. The ultimate goal of the checkout process is to make it easier for this buyer to complete their order and not give them any reason to abandon the purchasing process. Understand the value, features, benefits and price.
If your cart conversion rate is less than 20%, meaning more than 80% of shoppers are abandoning your cart, there are many opportunities to optimize and increase your conversion rate.
The global average cart conversion rate is 30%, with conversion rates as high as 50-60% in the US.
Before you start testing and implementing changes to your site, it’s good to learn from what others have done. Below are some best practices to maximize conversion rates, some tactics to reduce abandonment, and some strategies to increase average order value.
A Clean Call to Action
Each page in your purchasing funnel, from the home page to product pages to cart pages, should contain a single call to action. The call to action button should use a high-contrast color that is different from other elements on the page. Using descriptive text like “Add to Cart” or “Place Order” is more effective than generic text like “Next” or “Continue.” The area around the call to action should be kept clear and tidy to draw attention to the button.

Branding of the Shopping Cart view
To deliver a seamless customer experience, your shopping cart should become an extension of your website, product, or app, with consistent branding, design, and layout throughout the purchasing flow. Having consistent branding, design, and style is crucial to building trust. You don’t want your cart to look more like a phishing attempt than a real cart.
Apply the same Style Guide to cart pages for a consistent look. For example, the header and footer of cart pages should look the same as the previous page in the purchase funnel

Clearly displays total cost and subtotals
The cart must indicate the total price the customer will be charged, broken down into separate lines for the product price, taxes, and shipping fees (if applicable). Hidden costs only frustrate buyers and can lead to refunds and chargebacks.

Intuitive progress navigation
Be sure to communicate the number of steps required to place an order and what stage of the overall process the buyer is at. A map or progress indicator should be placed at the top of the page. Headings and subheadings can also be used to describe the purpose of each section of the form. When using a checkout flow with a Review page, informing customers that they can review their order before completing it has been shown to increase conversion rates.
Other navigation elements, such as your website’s main navigation menu, should not be displayed on shopping cart pages to keep the shopper’s attention focused on completing their order.

Refund Policy
Adding “Satisfaction Guarantee” or “30-Day Money Back Guarantee” icons can remove any doubt and reverse risk. This shows that you care about customer satisfaction and can eliminate any doubts or hesitation that may cause cart abandonment.

Show your Costumers that they have support at hand
Display Customer Support contact information, such as a 24/7 toll-free local phone number, at the top of the page. The footer can also include additional details such as email, instant messaging, live chat, and social media. Buyers trust suppliers more if they know they can be reached through multiple channels.

Start implementing these improvements today and increase your conversion rate!
Follow these tips that we recommend and with this you will see how you increase the key metrics that you initially took as a basis, making your investment much more profitable and achieving a much more optimized cost per sale.
If you need help implementing these improvements in your Woocommerce or Shopify, or are considering starting your virtual store today, you can rely on our talented team and receive a proposal for the creation of your ecommerce or the implementation of these improvements (Depending on your case). We invite you to contact us through the following form so that together we can take your digital business to exponential growth.
