You’ve spent the time, money and effort necessary to bring customers into your store. You’ve provided streamlined navigation, an easy-to-use website and a slew of amazing products. Yet despite your efforts, there seems to be a problem. Many of your shoppers enter your store, select a few items and head for the checkout page. But before completing the purchase, they suddenly vanish to leave e-store owners wondering what went wrong.

Typically, online merchants try to lure customers back with email marketing, remarketing and advertisements. And while these things tend to work, and work well, they eat into operating costs and take a considerable amount of time to execute. With that in mind, let’s focus on a few key ways you can reduce shopping-cart abandonment, increase sales and save yourself from hours of painstaking labor.

Invest in trust

Build trust over time with customers and they won’t question their purchases with you. If they’re comfortable with your store and its brand, they’ll return as loyal shoppers.

How do you build trust? Simple. Do an awesome job… all the time. If you ship products late, don’t allow the return of broken goods or maybe you fail to keep customers updated on relevant company information, then they’re not going to magically trust you. Trust is earned, not given.

Trust between a merchant and a shopper often happens before human interaction occurs. And that’s why it’s a great idea to feature security/trust badges on the homepage of your ecommerce website. Also, use https: instead of http: to show your tech savvy shoppers that you’re website is secure. This will help customers feel more confident about providing sensitive payment information.

Simplify currency conversions

Let’s work off the following example. If I use Euros on a daily basis and your site lists product prices in USD, I’d need to be able to easily convert the listed price into the currency of my choosing. Failing to offer this feature will send your international shoppers packing. After all, no one wants to take the time to convert exchange rates manually every time they make a purchase.

Once you have an idea of who your customers are and where they are shopping from, a dynamic currency conversion tool will automatically convert your product pages to a shoppers’ currency of choice.

Offer a helping hand

Be on standby 24/7. Having a phone number, chat box, email contact form etc… posted on your site will customers go from point A to point B without complication.

Also, consider creating Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts for your online store. These will serve as a great communication tools that both you and your customers will grow to depend on.

In summation, try your hardest to be there for the customer at all times via whatever channel they feel most comfortable with. Should you believe that email isn’t working, ask a customer to call you directly so  you can help them resolve whatever issue they have immediately. After a few messages back and forth, the awkwardness/shyness that initially exists will likely have been broken.

The above article was penned by Mitchell Abdullah, Content Strategist at AddShoppers.

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