iPerceptions: Why website visitors aren't buying

A survey of U.S. online shoppers has thrown some light on the disparity between the number of people visiting e-commerce websites to research and the number who go on to make a purchase.

by Helen Leggatt

According to iPerceptions' E-commerce Industry Report Q2 2009, 38.6% of the 360,000 or so visitors to the 160 websites tracked were in the research stage of the buying process while just 17% were at the buying stage.

Delving into the data, iPerceptions was able to establish several reasons why visitors weren't purchasing. The main reason was that visitors weren't able to find what they were looking for (34%) while price and navigation/usability issues tied in second place (13%) followed by shipping policies (9%).

With over a quarter (27.1%) of website visitors arriving from search engines, it is imperative that online retailers take steps to ensure that they only appear in search engine results for products they actually sell.

At the same time, checking out site navigation and usability to ensure visitors can easily find product specifications, customer service information, delivery and payment options will help guide and reassure the consumer along the purchase funnel.

"By structuring their sites so that visitors can look for - and find - crucial decision-making information, companies can remove a major hurdle responsible for causing would-be purchasers to eventually abandon the process altogether," said iPerceptions' President and CEO, Claude Guay. "This is extraordinarily valuable information for online retailers as we move into the holidays, and something that should really make marketers stand up and take notice."