Top 6 Ways to Make Your eCommerce Store More Sticky

The average abandonment rate for e-commerce stores is 67.89%, which is a frightening statistic. Not only that, but it's a frustratingly tricky problem for e-commerce store owners to deal with.

The truth is that abandonment is not a new phenomenon. It's just a new way of saying "no." The majority of reasons for abandonment are due to retailer mistakes, such as a lack of payment options, insufficient security, and incomplete product information.

One thing is sure: no e-commerce store will ever achieve a 100% cart completion rate. Every online store will experience a drop in traffic and will be unable to satisfy everyone. However, as things stand, failing to retain visitors or customers at the store or shopping cart level can be costly.

A variety of factors influence the abandonment rate. According to an Econsultancy survey conducted using the TolunaQuick tool, 74 percent of shoppers will abandon carts due to high shopping charges, and another 54 percent will leave due to technical problems.

So, as a retailer, what can you do to stop the rot and keep your customers' attention and money?

Why Should Your eCommerce Store Prioritize Stickiness?

When you think of your eCommerce store as "sticky," you might think of your sticky header. As someone scrolls through your store, this remains affixed to the top or side of the page.

The stickiness we'll be discussing in this guide, on the other hand, is a little different. Rather than keeping your header in place, the goal of making your eCommerce store "sticky" is to encourage customers to (literally) stick around. The longer they browse your store, the more likely they will make a purchase.

Completing this chain of events is one of the most difficult challenges that eCommerce businesses face today.

With so many competing online stores, it can be difficult for your products to break through the clutter and find their way into a shopping cart.

But that's not even the most challenging part. Once a customer adds items to their cart, you'll need to overcome another barrier to conversion: the checkout process.

Cart abandonment rates are at an all-time high, costing upwards of $18 billion in revenue. This occurs when customers abandon the items in their shopping carts that they wanted.

6 Easy Ways to Increase the Stickiness of Your eCommerce Store

These six simple strategies will help ensure that shoppers take the appropriate actions once they arrive at your eCommerce store:

1. Make sure the UX/UI is accurate.

User Experience (UX) is significant in e-commerce. UX/UI, defined as how a user interacts with a product and how they use it, is critical for an e-commerce store to achieve its objectives. The user experience (UX) of an e-commerce store should be intuitive, convenient, and enjoyable. Something Digital has a few pointers to take a walk through your e-commerce aisles more enjoyable with better UX/UI:

• Allow customers to browse their way around by utilizing an easy-to-use navigational structure. Include methods for flirting with a sorting order. Make use of breadcrumbs.

• Highlight products by using images and videos for all products. Make sure to include upsells, cross-sells, and related product recommendations.

• Customers should be able to create wish lists. Include social media sharing.

• As usual, strong calls to action. Use active language (it doesn't have to be fancy or cool).

2. Use Gamification

While there is enough cart abandonment in e-commerce to scare businesses away, the video game industry will surpass $100 billion this year. A game must contain something compelling enough to warrant such a market. It's no surprise that businesses are attempting to use Gamification for business.

Incorporating gaming elements into your e-commerce store can increase customer engagement while keeping them focused. What does that look like in practice? David Moth discovered how some e-commerce stores successfully use Gamification.

3. Include a lot of product information.

The quality of the information you provide is one way to set your site apart from competitors. If you're selling a physical product, you'll need detailed, high-resolution photos that show every angle, allow you to zoom in, and provide scale. People want to inspect the product as if they were in a physical store, turning it over in their hands.

It is also critical to include as much detail as possible in the specifications. How many decibels of noise does your product make when running if it has moving parts? How much current does it draw if the alternating current powers it? 

If your product is bolted on, list all of the required bolt dimensions or included. What size is it really if it's wearable? A Zara XL is equivalent to a J. Crew medium. These details go beyond the standard technical specifications found on the side of a box. And how does the product, whatever it is, stack up against similar competing offerings? Graphs, infographics, and other quick comparisons are handy. The more detail you can provide, especially content that addresses your customers' needs, the more sticky your site will be.

4. With customer reviews, you can start building trust right away

Including customer reviews, particularly high-quality images or videos, can also help you keep shoppers glued to your store long enough to make a purchase.

Customer reviews quickly build trust and inform people that your brand is safe to use.

This shortens the time it takes customers to buy from your store while increasing sales, making it a must-have strategy.

Use our top-rated review management software to automate your customer review process. Then you won't have any trouble getting customer feedback or converting new customers.

5. Make it a Fun Experience

The final effective strategy for increasing the stickiness of your website is to gamify it and make it a fun, exciting, and rewarding experience.

All eCommerce sites lack elements that make in-store shopping so enjoyable, such as instant gratification, sensory appeal (such as smelling a candle), and the thrill of snagging a one-of-a-kind find on sale.

So it's up to you to include some amusing elements that make the online experience worthwhile for customers and enjoyable. Creating and gamifying a loyalty program is one of the best ways to accomplish this.

This entails simply providing incentives for customers to buy from your brand. You should create interactive experiences, such as virtual leaderboards and earnable badges, that reward customers for reaching certain levels or reaching different milestones with your brand.

You can then use these items like tickets to win prizes or special pricing, which motivates people to act while having fun.

6. Make the checkout process simple.

Create an account? Please enter my phone number. Make a password?... The password is too long! I need to get out of here! This is where many e-commerce sites fail spectacularly, and it is most likely what accounts for those high abandoned-cart figures—first-time checkout is a royal pain.

Here's a pro tip: make the checkout process simple. You can ask customers for more information later and suggest that they create an account on the order confirmation page, but for now, you're just trying to make that first sale. As much information as possible should be requested. 

Usability is critical – think limited vision and clumsy fingers, especially on smartphones, increasingly being used as primary Internet devices by consumers. Fill in as much information as possible, such as city and state from the postal code or credit card type from the number. Instead of using drop-down menus, use large, easy-to-read fields, proper tab key behavior, and the ability to type dates and states. Including payment options such as Amazon, Google, and Apple Pay as alternatives to entering credit card information can significantly increase conversions.

Final thoughts

You've reached this point in our guide because you realize how critical it is to make your eCommerce store sticky.

This ensures that potential (and existing) customers fall in love with your site and stay long enough to make a purchase. This should reduce cart abandonment, increase conversions, and foster brand loyalty, increasing revenue.

If you follow the advice in this guide, you'll be well on your way to creating the stickiest eCommerce site of your dreams!