There’s an interesting blog post by Scott Storey, of UTalkMarekting, exploring how businesses are missing out on sales when customers ‘abandon’ their online shopping cart before making payment.
Leaving a full shopping cart on an online store is the equivalent of filling up your trolley in Asda and then walking out before reaching the tills (without the goods of course). The question for companies is why have these potential customers walked away? In a supermarket the answer is usually because the queues are too long but that’s not the reason online.
As the blog states:
Some of the main reasons cited for abandoned online purchases are the complexity of checkout processes and the high cost of shipping and handling costs. However, another factor may be consumers’ changing shopping habits. Two-thirds of consumers polled in a survey conducted by Forrester Research last May, said that they preferred to shop around before committing to a purchase.
This is indeed a troubling issue for many retailers as more and more customers turn to the web as their primary shopping destination, but what seems to be happening is that customers are using their shopping baskets as more of a ‘favourites’ place than a firm decision to pay. The challenge for retailers therefore, is to find ways of enticing customers to take the plunge and actually make a purchase.
Click on the source link to read the full blog.
Source: UTalkMarketing — It’s in the basket, so why does it never quite make it to the checkout?