U.K. shoppers reveal pros and cons of online retail experience
It's no secret that not all traffic to an ecommerce website will result in sales, but a decent amount of customers select items and begin the checkout process only to abandon their digital shopping carts at the point of sale. The issue is costing U.K. retailers more than £1.02 billion (nearly $600 million) annually, according to a recent Experian report. The findings also indicated that online shoppers were deciding to not purchase items due largely to inefficient and archaic identification processes, but there are many other reasons for shopping cart abandonment as well.
What services are working to convert site traffic to sales?
CWCS Managed Hosting, a U.K. server and hosting company, recently conducted research to learn more about what convinced and dissuaded British shoppers from making purchases online. Some aspects of ecommerce software may not only meet customers' expectations, but convince them to spend even more than they might've planned. For instance, 53 percent of shoppers who took part in the survey said they were likely to spend more when an online store offered better payment security, and 49 percent felt that better personal information protection gave them the confidence to spend more.
Online merchants may want to emphasize these two areas of their retail management systems as well as accurate delivery dates, more payment methods and customized offers. All of these factors have helped encourage shoppers to make bigger purchases, so improving upon them may drive sales.
Why are shoppers abandoning carts?
The biggest issue that led to abandonment was unexpected costs, which were enough to convince 56 percent of shoppers not to buy. Another 26 percent were dissuaded from making a purchase if they were required to register an account on the retailer's site. Merchants may want to offer a way for buyers to check out without signing up, such as creating a guest account option.
Confusing navigation, site crashes and prolonged load times rounded out the top five reasons British shoppers changed their minds about making a purchase. In fact, the researchers learned that 57 percent of online shoppers give up after waiting just three seconds for a page to load. Retailers may want to take a closer look at their sites' functionality and the quality of the online shopping experience. Better POS software, for instance, could help reduce the frequency of cart abandonment.
