The Reighley Report

I was at my sons baseball game this weekend, and noticed that the bottom of my sandals where getting worn out.  See, I am a total sandal guy, and love my Birkenstock!  The family is getting ready to go to Disney World at the end of June, so it is new sandal time!  Being the total iPhone geek, I got on my phone and stated searching.  I went to Amazon and typed in Birkenstock and found a pair I liked.  I put them in my cart so I would remember to look at them later – see at this point in my sons game, it was time to go make some selective comments to the ump whose strike zone was talker and wider than most of the 1o year old’s on the team.  I digress…..

My behavior is probably representative of a lot of people. We go to a web site, put something in our cart, so we remember it.  It started me down the path of thinking about abandon cart stats.  As life sometimes does, Sucharita Mulpuru, a principle analysts at Forrester Research just released a report entitled Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment. While the report does not present anything that a good eCommerce professional did not already know, it does make some great points. First, the report indications that “88% of Web buyers say that they have abandoned an online shopping cart without completing a transaction”.  That seems a little high to me.  Normally I use the Fireclick Index as a benchmark for cart abandonment stats.  Today they are showing a 70% global abandon rate.  Two different looks really, Sucharita’s data is asking if a buy has abandoned a cart, Fireclick is show what the actually abandon rate is.

Now for the meat, why do customers abandon a cart – what stops them from completing the purchase process online.  When I look at the chart below, two thinks really jump out, Shipping Cost and Readiness to Purchase.

[caption id="attachment_255" align="alignnone" width="479" caption="Understanding Shopping Cart Abandonment by Sucharita Mulpuru at Forrester Research"][/caption]
Concerns over shipping is the #1 reason for cart abandonment.
Customers want to understand shipping cost.  As indicated above, 44% of customers surveyed abandoned their cart because of the high cost of shipping.  Customers concern over shipping does not stop their, 22% say that having the shipping cost displayed in the checkout was too late in the process – 6% of customers abandon because they did not want to wait for the product to be shipped and 3% said they abandoned because they could not ship to a different address other than there billing address.
Not ready to purchase is the #2 reason for cart abandonment
When looking at customer behavior during the checkout process, the second main reason for cart abandonment is that the customer is still in the information search or evaluation of alternative steps of the consumer buying decision process.  You see this with 41% of customers stating they are not ready to purchase, 27% comparing prices and 24% stating that they are saving the product to consider purchasing later.

So, as an eCommerce professional, what can you do with this information?

Focus on transparency in shipping charges.
Turn shipping concerns into promotional opportunities.  Amazon has done a great job with this with their Amazon Prime membership.
Add “Wish List” functionality to your web site, and make it easy to use!  If customers researching, make it easy for them to save the products in a wish list.  Then, use that wish list to market and promote!
Fix the little things.  I did not talk about the “other stuff” that influence a customer such as privacy policies, email concerns, call center ordering etc.  Fix the little things.  Make your cart process easy and do the thinks in your control to eliminate barriers the customers perceive as issues during the purchase process.

So I don’t leave you hanging, I did not purchase my Birkenstocks from Amazon, although they are still in my cart.  I found a great pair on eBay.  No worries, I am ready for Disney now!

Chris Reighley is an eCommerce marketing professional, online consumer behavior expert and social marketing evangelist. He is currently working on a PhD in eCommerce for Northcentral University in Prescott Valley, Arizona.  Chris owned and operated many ecommerce retail stores in the music, golf and health & beauty categories.  Currently Chris is the Director of eCommerce at FillTek in Cincinnati, Ohio where he works with online retailers such as Hugo Boss, Tretorn, Tommy Hilfiger and Bluefly.