Do you think that In E-commerce, providing coupons to consumers will reduce shopping cart abandonment?

Thank you for the A2A

I totally agree with the answer by Nishant as it covers all the aspects.

My two cents would be that providing coupons may not be directly linked with abandonment of shopping cart as coupons increase the website traffic and the discount increases more sales. However, with the coupons, the website server may NOT be equipped in advance to handle the massive traffic all of a sudden which would result in the website crashing and the customers not being able to complete their transaction. 

The agitation of which would make them abandon their entire shopping experience altogether. 

Solution would be to ensure that the servers are able to manage and handle any amount of requests once the coupons are released so that the sales increase and the customer has a good shopping experience. 

Thanks for the invite. 

There are a few issues that may lead to high abandonment rates during the checkout process. These may be: 

- Checkout process bottlenecks (For eg. Debit cards not being an accepted source of payment / Compulsory registration before checkout / Website page loading speeds are too slow etc.)

- Consumer not convinced about product-related issues due to certain reasons such as: too many options for the same product/model available at very different price points by different sellers / no mention of warranty for the said product / no mention of the process that the site will follow in case anything goes wrong - Eg. damage during shipping, product delivered being different from the one shown on the website, product is not an original but a knock-off etc. These concerns generally arise for a consumer during high-value online transactions like purchasing a TV. 

- Lastly, some customers may just be window shopping and looking out for the best deals which they will come back to at a later point of time in order to complete the transaction.

Solutions for these issues could vary based on the product, price range etc. but some basic ways to tackle these concerns could be:

- Live chat which pops up if the transaction is on hold, to address all customer concerns and provide solutions for issues that they may have - especially during high-value transactions.

- As mentioned in the question, providing discount coupons valid for a limited time, other options in the same price range etc. via email, if the consumer leaves the page without completing the transaction, as an Urgency creation method could also work.

- Having a good loyalty program in place, when a consumer signs up and informing them about the different stages in the loyalty program could also be useful in convincing the consumer to complete the transaction and collect points.