It Pays to be Counterintuitive: Let Customers Save for Later

Sometimes I write things for other companies. Here's a recent piece for my company coolblueweb's UX Series.

The average abandoned cart rate is between 60%-80%1 for eCommerce stores. With numbers so high, store owners have several options to bring customers back to their stores to complete those purchases. One of those methods, though it may it may seem counterintuitive, is allowing customers to save items in their carts to purchase later.

Many eCommerce stores do not provide users a method for saving an item in their cart for purchase later. Magento and WooCommerce do not have this functionality by default. For sites without this option, customers are limited in the decisions they can make when they aren’t ready to purchase an item immediately. The user must either:

• Abandon the cart completely

• Remove the item from the cart without saving it anywhere

• Remove the item from the cart, find it again on the site, and to save to a wishlist (if a wishlist is available)

None of these choices help the customer get what they want or help the store sell more products. Looking at the cart from the customer’s perspective can help guide what options a store should have.

How customers use shopping carts

Customers don’t only add items to their cart to purchase immediately. Customers also add items to:

• Save many items they like and keep shopping for more

• Adjust their cart to fit a certain budget

• Make product comparisons

• Add and remove products to qualify for discounts such as free shipping

Key do’s and don’ts to improve a store’s save-for-later feature: