I did some analysis of best-practices for e-comm cart abandonment. Here's some of what I found.
1.Eliminate registration. According to Forester Research, 23% of shoppers will abandon when asked to register before checking out. Unless you absolutely must require registration, test a guest checkout can increase the number of customer purchases by 45 percent. While every business hopes to increase the lifetime value of a customer—and registration makes that easier–some customers don’t want to register.
2.Hide the Coupon Field. This little field usually sits innocently on the check-out page, right above the “buy now” button, and it is a major cause of shopping cart abandonment. When shoppers see that field, they will frequently leave your site in search of a coupon code, and once they are gone they usually do not come back. Kill the coupon field and see what that does for your sales.
3.According to Forester, using live chat can lift sales up to 45%. Brother could test the placement of the live chat (and phone number for live orders) and test the live chat graphics closer to the cart graphics.
4.Send an email to customers who have been idle and have items in their cart. The email would ask if they want to get help with the order via live chat or phone.
5.Use search re-targeting to reach customers who have abandoned. Expose them to a display ad that reminds them that they have items in their cart and offer live chat or a phone number on landing page to assist and answer questions.
6.Make the purchaser aware of shipping cost upfront, not after credit card information is requested. High shipping costs are the number one source of cart abandonment according to ComScore.
7.If a prospective customer has been browsing a web page for a period of time, reach out with an email invitation to chat that is tailored to the product or page your customer is looking at and then routes the chat according. Average order sizes increase when you route calls to operators and specialists according to specific areas of expertise or focus.
8.Display product availability. Few things are more frustrating than finding out at checkout that an item is not in stock. Either show stock levels on the product page itself or alert the customer when they try to add that item to their cart. Don’t worry about displaying an actual number; “In stock!” or “Currently out of stock” is sufficient.