It takes a lot of effort to get an online shopper to the point of conversion, as there’s so much marketing and sales work to be done along the way. Big brands use PPC ads, influencer deals, social media campaigns — anything to push qualified leads. And it’s that crucial last-second moment that has all the impact. They buy, or they don’t. You profit, or you don’t.

It takes a lot of effort to get an online shopper to the point of conversion, as there’s so much marketing and sales work to be done along the way. Big brands use PPC ads, influencer deals, social media campaigns — anything to push qualified leads. And it’s that crucial last-second moment that has all the impact. They buy, or they don’t. You profit, or you don’t.

While it’s never good to lose a lead, regardless of how early in the process a prospect opts out, it’s clearly worse when it happens right at the end. All that effort gets wasted. All that time is spent on tempting the shopper, and absolutely no return on your investment. Anything you can do to prevent that from happening, then, is highly worthwhile.

In this post, we’re going to look at three core tactics to help you prevent people from giving up immediately before buying (AKA cart abandonment). Implement them at all smartly (and track your conversions properly) for a notable uptick in your success. Let’s get started.

Work on nailing your pricing

How much you charge doesn’t only matter before a shopper reaches the checkout. People change their minds for many reasons, and uncertainty about the quality of a deal can creep in at any time. You can get carried away, add something to your cart because you like the idea of buying it, then stop before you actually purchase it because you know you can’t afford it.

And it doesn’t necessarily take a big change to your pricing to make a difference. Minor tweaks matter. If you charge slightly less, you might make a decent deal feel like a great one — and if you charge slightly more, you can price yourself out of contention. So how do you get that right? The only practical solution is to keep making tiny changes to see how they perform.

If you sell products, you need to take production and material costs into account, but you still have some room in the profit margins to mix things up. Cut a cost by 5% for half your visitors, and see how that impacts the results. Do the extra conversions make up for the lost profitability? And if you sell services or subscriptions, you have even more leeway. In the case of the latter, try subscription management software with baked-in A/B testing to help retain customers.

Give shoppers less time to reconsider

Once someone has made the decision to add an item to their cart, you want them to check out as quickly as possible. The more time they spend considering it, the more likely it is that they’ll reconsider. So what can prevent this from happening? Urgency. There are various ways to push someone to convert now instead of waiting, and you need to draw upon them.

Think about the potency of limited-time offers, for instance. When you see that there isn’t much stock of a product left, you want it more: it’s a tried-and-tested psychological truism. You can also add incentives to hurry shoppers along. Tell someone that they’ll get an extra 10% off their order if they place it before a certain time. Their eagerness to take advantage of the added value will overwhelm their caution and drive them to continue.

So much is made of the fear of missing out, and for good reason. No one wants to be left behind the curve or fail to participate in big trends. And anyone who gets to the point of almost converting clearly has a significant interest in going ahead. You’re just nudging them to do what they already want to do (and have come close to doing).

Make your funnel feel seamless

A common mistake with sales funnels is assuming that the steps can be treated as disparate, as though it doesn’t matter how a shopper was convinced to be interested in a product. As noted earlier, uncertainty can linger and cause issues down the line. The overall level of polish in a sales process comes into play during the final decision. It isn’t just the quality and value of the product being considered: it’s also the reliability and trustworthiness of the brand.

Cohesion should be one of your primary goals, with every step along the way sharing key elements when it comes to design, functionality, and messaging above all else (cohesive content is vital). Relate it to giving a movie a satisfying ending: the ending should pay off everything that led to it, leading to a lasting appreciation. When that isn’t done, you get endings that feel ill-fitting and lead to mostly-enjoyable movies getting terrible reviews.

The best way to gauge this is to work your way through the marketing funnel from the perspective of a stranger, then see how you feel when you get to the conversion point. Are you conflicted about the purchase? Has anything failed to make sense? Has everything felt polished and consistent from a branding standpoint? If not, put plenty of time into making appropriate changes, and keep going until you’re satisfied.