Online shopping cart abandonment rates high

Many customers abandon their online shopping carts during the purchase process, new data gives some insight as to why this happens.

by Helen Leggatt

For many websites the biggest loss of revenue happens due to the checkout process. MarketingSherpa recently found that the average abandonment rate for online shopping carts is a hefty 60 percent.

Twelve percent of the 60 percent abandoning their carts do so before they’ve even begun the checkout process, which leaves 48 percent leaving the buying process at the checkout stage. There are various reasons for shoppers to abandon their shopping carts. Some are put off by trust issues, some by speed and many are comparison shopping and never intended to complete the purchase.

"If only 10 percent of the shopping carts were left behind, the loss to business would be substantial. At 60 percent, the loss must be astronomical," said Eugene Fram, the J. Warren McClure research professor of marketing in Rochester Institute of Technology's (RIT) E. Philip Saunders College of Business, via NewsFactor.

Some ways in which you can optimize traffic to checkout are:

- Ensure your site exudes trust and security. Reassure the consumer about data privacy, transaction security and use of personal data.

- Be upfront and visible about any “additional” charges such as delivery, credit processing or packaging. Providing a widget to allow shoppers to track how much they are spending so there are no nasty surprises at the checkout could prove helpful.

- Keep the length of the checkout process to a minimum. Lengthy registrations can be a real turn off. Adding a progress bar allows the shopper to see where they are in the checkout process.