You’ve launched your courses, created the funnels, and set up the ads. But are you getting the sales numbers you need? Are your leads converting to customers? Are they completing the payment process or signing up, adding the course to their carts, and leaving without buying anything? Every online business goes through this, but there are several questions about this that creators have like What is course abandonment? How do I prevent it? What do I do to bring those leads back?

What is cart abandonment?

Cart abandonment by a learner occurs when the learner adds one of your online courses to his cart but ends up failing to make the purchase decision. It could be better for your online business as you lose sales while missing out on an opportunity to provide excellent knowledge to your learners. Unfortunately, many shoppers abandon the purchase process just at the last stage. And that results in a whole lot of issues for the business.

And course, cart abandonment emails are pretty standard in an online knowledge business. According to studies, cart abandonment by a learner stands at 79.17%, which is huge and not a great thing to hear when your primary source of revenue is your online course.

With so much time, effort, and resources spent on new customer acquisition, having a customer leave towards the end of the sales funnel could be better for business.

Common Reasons for course cart abandonment by prospective leads

There are multiple reasons why a learner abandons a cart. The most important and relevant ones are listed below:

Doubts

Yes, it can be as simple as doubt. Most customers who abandon the cart doubt the efficacy of their purchase decision. This can be due to the following:

• Lack of trust in the brand
• Multiple products with little to no differences
• Unable to understand the actual need for the product
• Fear of missing out on a better deal after a certain period

With all of these doubts, a customer spirals into a sense of confusion. He begins questioning his decision-making and ends up hitting that back button. To tackle this, we recommend you create a great sales landing page by using the Knorish Website Builder. With a host of themes, building one is super simple. All in all, you need to give a concrete reason justifying the sales. You can even reach out to these customers personally and understand the reason behind the doubt while providing a resolution for the same.

Build non-boring and high-performing landing pages for your online academy.

Lack of a customer satisfaction guarantee message

Often creators need to include a customer satisfaction guarantee message. This message has to be shown within the sales page itself. Since we just discussed doubts, not teaching a guaranteed message is a sure-shot way to doubt in the mind of a customer. To tackle this, creators should include a customer guarantee message within the sales page which helps in building trust and credibility in the eyes of a customer. It even ensures that the customer feels valuable with such thoughtfulness from a seller’s perspective. All in all, a satisfied customer always purchases. Therefore, it is crucial and highly recommended to include such a message.

Payment processing problems

Cards not going through or cards declined! Yes, we all have faced this, and it is highly annoying. Other payment processing issues include:

• Card decline
• Internet banking failure due to bank blocks
• Wrong card information
• Incorrect password used by a buyer
• Security blocks

Organizing your payment mechanism is one of the key problems which results in cart abandonment rates by a learner. Once a potential learner is at the guest checkout page, all that a customer expects is to make the payment.

At times a customer might refrain or feels too scared to provide you with his details which again can lead to failed sales. Therefore take the necessary information while solving the privacy concerns of a buyer.

Internet issues

All face this issue. Situations may arise when the learner is ready to make the payment, but his internet disconnects. This may cause too much frustration leading to failed sales altogether. Therefore a prospective learner needs to understand that the internet might not work when they are about to hit that buy button. All we suggest to the learner is to have some amount of patience when dealing with online content. Retrying at a later time would have no harm, and you can continue your learning efforts without any delay.

With all these issues cropping up now, let’s look at some of the strategies that can help solve these problems and get over cart abandonment by a learner.

Strategies to get over cart abandonment

While we just discussed a lot of don’ts and issues that come up when buying, the truth is avoiding these completely is just not possible. As we just discussed, cart abandonment occurs for various reasons, and it isn’t always your fault. Many times, a learner would abandon the cart due to issues having absolutely nothing to do with your company.

A viewer might have added the product by mistake or was just casually browsing through the website without intending to buy. For us understanding the main reason behind this abandonment is not critical; getting over it is the main challenge. All that matters is that the abandonment has happened, and now our main goal is to get that course back into the cart of the learner, which leads back to conversion.

Rather than hoping these customers will come back, as a seller, you need to re-interact and engage with them as soon as possible. Whether you accomplish that by creating a FOMO or targeting them with ads, there are nine different strategies to win them over again.

• Have a price-beating pledge

Many academics have offered a price-beating pledge to customers. A price-beating pledge is a psychological trick that marketers have used for a long duration of time. It can be the difference between a customer abandoning the cart or completing the purchase. It offers a sense of security in the mind of a learner. Some companies even offer a price-matching guarantee as well. This can be quite helpful provided you are ready to offer a discount and reduce the price of the course.

• Create a sense of urgency or fear of the mission.

One of the most tried and tested formulas to win over customers is by creating a sense of urgency or FOMO. Urgency creates the fear of missing out. And that urgency can be anything. It can be a limited period discount, reduced price for a certain number of days, or limited availability for a product. All of this creates a sense of scarcity which compels a potential learner to decide then and there. Creators can create time-based discount coupons by using the Knorish coupon creator. The coupon creator even has the functionality to create a coupon based on a percentage discount or a discount on the price. With this, a creator can create a coupon based on his choice while creating a fear of missing out in the minds of customers

• Reach out to online shoppers with specific ads

Specifically, targeted ads allow you to re-reach the customer. Specifically, using Facebook and Google Adwords can be a great way to reach out to customers. For this, we recommend you keep a sizeable budget as advertising could be more pocket-friendly. It might be a small investment, but it requires constant effort to have the expected results. Creating ads is one side of the coin; creating specific ads while taking advantage of analytics is the other. You need to analyse data and create well-received ads by a customer. This way, you can reach out specifically while saving a few bucks in advertising. Now comes the question of what content to use within the ads. Our pick? Provide discount coupons while making the ad more graphic intensive. Use many pictures and colours to attract a viewer’s attention. The colours will attract him, while the coupon will push him to make the buying decision.

• Have a great return policy.

Creators can offer a return policy on their course products. It can be a statement on the course page which says, ‘Not satisfied with the product? Money-back guarantees for seven days after course purchase’. With this, the customer will be quite sure about his investment while being able to get back his money if he isn’t satisfied with the product. This helps build trust and confidence in the eyes of the learner, and he can make the purchase decision without any doubt. Even if you don’t wish to add a return policy, convey that to the customer in advance. If that isn’t done, then credibility can take a serious hit in the eyes of a learner. This is very important to implement if you wish to purge cart abandonment by a learner.

• Offer them something over their purchase

Add some additional value to the learner over the regular purchase. This can be a free ebook the learner can download after purchasing the course or even a PDF. This can be quite a push for the customer to buy the online course. It might take a few resources or time, but the efforts will be well worth it. This resource should be such that it comes in handy to the learner post-completion of the online course.

• Reach out to them with emails by offering discounts or showing some learner’s testimonials

You should understand that your product is not the only thing in a customer’s mind. He has probably visited multiple academies online before dropping by your website. He might have abandoned countless such websites with the product in the cart. You need to be super specific when retargeting these lost opportunities.

And the best way you can capture their attention is by reaching out to them with an email. This email should be specific while highlighting the benefits of your course. Over this, you need to add something extra to sweeten up the deal. And for this, you can offer them discount coupons which makes them tempted to buy your product.

You can even fill this email with testimonials from previous customers. Testimonials are the single most tool that can be used to motivate a customer. When prospective customers see proof that others have bought the product, they are likelier to buy it. To reduce cart abandonment by a learner, you need to show why your product is better than your competitors. And what better way to convince them than your customers speaking positively for you?

• Find out the reasons for abandonment

Creators can reach out to defected potential customers and find out the reasons for the cart abandonment. This can help understand the issue while helping the customer overcome this and make the purchase. And the best way to do that? Reach out to these potential learners on their social media accounts. You can find out who they are and ping them on their Facebook profile. Talk to them about the reasons, and listen to their concerns while providing them with a meaningful solution to their problem. If they have any suggestions about what can be improved, take their suggestions seriously and react and respond positively.

• Use a clear and strong call to action button

Call-to-action buttons are critical. You must ensure the call-to-action buttons are powerful enough to attract the viewer’s attention. The user should be able to make the decision by just seeing the button. Often creators use simple call-to-action buttons such as ‘Buy Now’.

While you can use such a call-to-action button, using something more meaningful and to the point would help. In place of ‘Buy Now,’ you can use ‘Begin Now’. Such a call to action button creates urgency while delivering the message to the learner about purchasing the course. All of this will surely help in faster decision-making.

• Offer multiple payment options

When running your own online course business, you don’t want anything between your learner and a seamless buying user experience. However, if the platform you use only has a single payment option or is very limited, you’re putting unnecessary obstacles between your prospect and his course product.

 Consumers today have multiple payment methods available to them. It becomes your responsibility to cater to these options individually. Knorish provides numerous payment options for your learners for online courses. Various gateways are available on the platform, such as PayPal, RazorPay, and Stripe Payment. Over this, a buyer can pay with his debit or credit card and net banking. Offering multiple payment options minimises another possible reason for cart abandonment by the learner.

As we have discussed above, there’s always a reason why a customer abandons the cart. It is highly recommended that you find the reason and act on it to bring the customer back. Cover all your weak links and find a perfect platform solution like Knorish to facilitate hassle-free online course business while reducing cart abandonment by a learner.