Top Reasons for Cart Abandonment #2: Difficulty With Promo Codes
Last week, we talked about required registration as part of our new series exploring eCommerce cart abandonment. This week, we’re looking at where to apply promo codes. Studies show that if you make customers wait too long to use their code during checkout, they’ll simply leave. The promo code field should be easy to find on the first step of payment checkout, otherwise customers are more inclined to exit the process.
One of our Magento sites for Leffot, allows you to input promo code in the first step of checkout.
Of similar importance to the placement of promo code fields within the checkout process as a whole, is the importance of placement within the page. Customers are likely to get frustrated quickly if they can’t find where to enter their promo code.
The flip side.
There is another side to promo codes all together, which is that they inform the customer that they could be getting their product for a potentially lower price. For some customers, this is the perfect opportunity to abandon their cart and go searching for the promo code.
Some suggestions for handling this:
- Only show the promo code box to users who are arriving at your site via a marketing email or affiliate link. It’s important though, if you choose this route, to make note somewhere on the page that the user needs to click through their email to the site if they are not seeing it.
- Use the promo entry box to build your marketing email list. By adding a ‘how do I get this?’ message next to the box, retailers can ask users to sign up for their mailing list to receive their discount code.
- Link to a blog post or another page on your site. This keeps users on your site and has the potential for SEO benefit as well!
Next week we will be discussing payment methods. Stay tuned!