Does your e-commerce business suffer from people abandoning their shopping basket or cart before buying? A recent study by Forrester Research found that 88% of on-line buyers say that they have abandoned a shopping cart without completing a transaction. This is the same percentage as five years ago.

Some of the problems include:

• Dislike of shipping costs.
• Being unprepared at point of sale to buy the goods, i.e. can’t find a credit card.
• Desire to compare prices elsewhere.

The research also found:

• On-line buyers who abandon shopping carts spend more money on-line than those who don’t. So it seems that the very people who abandon shopping carts are actually the most valuable to businesses.
• More than two-thirds of shopping cart abandoners say they like to shop around before making a purchase.
• Almost 50% of shopping cart abandoners say that they plan to conduct more on-line research before purchasing in order to get the best price.

So what can e-commerce businesses do about this? Some suggestions include:

• Be up-front about shipping costs of offer free delivery.
• Be sure to offer good deals and discounts.
• Make the buying process as simply as possible.

Tags: online retail, online shopping

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 17th, 2010 at 10:14 am and is filed under Business, Ecommerce, Website News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Posted by WebCreationUK You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.