Data compiled from Paypal and Comscore showing reaons why consumers had abandoned their shopping carts.
From the 2009 Paypal survey:
Nearly half (45 percent) of online shoppers have abandoned their carts multiple times in the past three weeks due to high shipping costs, security concerns and lack of convenience. The average cost of abandoned goods in U.S. shopping carts is $109.
The main reasons were:
– High shipping charges: 46 percent
– Wanted to comparison shop: 37 percent
– Lack of money: 36 percent
– Wanted to look for a coupon: 27 percent
– Wanted to shop offline: 26 percent
– Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24 percent
– Item was unavailable at checkout: 23 percent
– Couldn’t find customer support: 22 percent
– Concerned about security of credit card data: 21 percent
A similar survey was also conducted back in 2008 whereby the findings were pretty similar:
Unexpectedly high shipping fees are the number one reason consumers abandon online purchases. Checkout abandonment is a significant challenge for online merchants, with an estimated two out of every three consumers failing to pay for items they put in their shopping carts.
– 43 percent of consumers didn’t pay for items in their shopping carts because shipping charges were too high
– 36 percent of purchasers didn’t pay for items because they felt the total cost of the purchase was more expensive than anticipated
– 27 percent of shoppers didn’t pay for items because they wanted to comparison shop at other Web sites before making a purchase
– 16 percent of consumers didn’t pay for items because they could not contact customer support to answer questions
– 14 percent of shoppers didn’t pay for items because they forgot their usernames and passwords for their store accounts created with the merchants
This piece of imformation is important for both merchants/retailers and affiliates as a sale/conversion doesn’t happen until a purchase has been checked-out from a buyer’s shopping cart. We can also see that comparison shopping and coupon hunting is gonna stay no matter what plus there are also factors where merchants/affiliates don’t have much control on such as security concerns, customers forgotten login details and personal financial situations.
If there’s really things that a good retailer/merchant should be doing well are:
– Be sure that customer support is well trained and easily contactable
– Making sure that the shopping cart is ALWYAS technically working fine and keep on optimizing the sales funnel. We all know that’s easier said than done but that’s what all comes down to at the end of the day.
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