You've spent untold hours crafting the perfect high-ticket offer, a comprehensive agency business development course, a point-and-click easy agency pricing template, and then building remarkable landing pages. You launch, promote, and advertise, hoping traffic shows up. And it does... only there is one HUGE problem. As soon as your visitors see the price tag BAM, they bolt — shopping cart abandonment strikes again.
It's the final barrier between interest and conversion, where many high-ticket offers falter. I know because I'm writing this article because I, too, suffered from this unfortunate fate and went on a vision quest to find answers to this all-too-common problem.
Today I want to share what I found with you so that you too might overcome the most common reasons behind shopping cart abandonment, to transform those near-misses into converted sales.
The Most Common Reasons for Shopping Cart Abandonment
It's easy to blame shopping cart abandonment on price, especially for high-ticket items. But that oversimplifies things and often leads to knee-jerk price drops or discounts. I'm not immune to jerky knees; and in some cases, the most obvious reason is the right one. So test the hypothesis, but be prepared to discover that you'll continue to see high shopping cart abandonment rates even after offering huge discounts. In those cases, your offer may suffer from one of these common issues:
- Complexity of the Purchase Decision: High-ticket items often require a significant commitment of time and or money. In these situations, your buyers may need more time to think it over, seek approvals or consult with others before finalizing such a purchase.
Solution: Test retargeting campaigns, shopping cart abandonment email campaigns, and follow-up drip campaigns designed to reinforce the primary value proposition of your offer. - Unclear Value Proposition: Sure, the landing page makes sense to you. But you are not your target audience. Often we forget what it was like to suffer the pain points that our offers seek to alleviate. As we all know, the unique benefits, outcomes, or advantages of your offer must be clearly articulated, or potential customers will hesitate to proceed.
Solution: Talk to the people you created the offer to help. Ask them for honest feedback on your landing page and offers. Would they purchase it? Why? And more importantly, why not? Don't listen to hear, listen to understand. Once you've heard them out, ask them how they'd change the landing page, copy, headlines, etc., to make the offer irresistible. - Lack of Trust: This one is especially painful. At least for me. But trust is critical, especially when you can't guarantee an outcome based on purchasing your offer. Potential buyers might not feel comfortable proceeding with your high-value transaction without a solid reputation, sufficient testimonials, or social proof.
Solution: Again, retargeting campaigns, especially on social media, might solve the issue. BUT don't retarget with your offer. Instead, retarget with helpful content you create — don't even mention your offer. Instead, use your campaign to establish yourself better and improve your credibility. Then leverage the science of Propinquity and establish yourself as a trusted provider, one the potential buyer is more than happy to purchase from when you do finally remarket your offer to them online or via email. - There Is Not Enough Pain: This is a huge one, in my opinion. As I caution my sales training workshop attendees, just because the buyer says no or won't commit to moving to the next step doesn't mean your offer is wrong. Sometimes the buyer isn't ready to be saved by your solution. Human beings are conditioned to avoid risk, and like it or not, choosing to buy your solution is a risk, and not only a financial one. Your solution requires the buyer to do something different, and unfortunately, the status quo is often viewed as less risky than making a change.
Solution: Beats me. Honestly, I've read more articles and research about overcoming this issue, and honestly, I haven't found a truly compelling solution yet. There is no simple solution to this problem because it's such a multifaceted, profoundly psychological hurdle to purchase. If I had to pick one, it would be Patience. Stay top-of-mind with your shopping cart abandonment folks through social media or email, and keep building your credibility. Eventually, if you're targeting a real pain point, they'll come around.
How Credibility Combats Shopping Cart Abandonment
The old saying, people buy from people they know, like, and trust, is only partially true. It's missing one distinct word — credible — as in; people buy from people they know, like, trust, and find credible on the subject or product they're asked to purchase.
Before you even think about proactively promoting a new offer, much less spend ad dollars, soften up your target audience with helpful content surrounding the pain point you plan to solve. Create a boatload of helpful content helping your target audience solve tangential problems and market that content with social ads and keyword campaigns. Let your audience get to know you, find that they like and trust you, AND based on your helpful content, find you a credible resource for solving their pain points.
Then start promotions and paid ad campaigns designed to drive your audience to your landing page, mentally preconditioned to believe they'll find a helpful solution to the pain point your advertisements purport to solve.
And if People Continue To Abandon Your Shopping Cart
Then, it's time to reconsider your offer. Maybe the world isn't ready for your wiz-bang solution. Perhaps you've misread the tea leaves. Or your offer is too much. Not too expensive, but too much work. People want simple, quick, silver bullets. But often, the solution they want and need are two different things. What they need isn't a quick silver bullet but a more extensive methodology or approach that takes time and effort to create the ultimate solution to their pain.
So before you abandon your offer altogether, look for ways to break it down into smaller, less expensive chunks. Then market the most important chunk — the one that solves the most painful problem immediately and without a lot of time or money investment by the buyer — and launch a new campaign designed to sell that offer.
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This post was originally published on Painless Prospecting, the weekly sales and marketing blog created by the fine folks at Converse Digital. If you want to learn how to create, engage in, and convert conversations into new clients and customers, give them a call.
