BizRate.com, NPD Joint Survey Reveals 75 Percent of Online Consumers Are Abandoning Shopping Carts According to a study released by BizRate.com, a leading e-commerce rating and marketing research firm, and The NPD Group, Inc., a leading authority in consumer panel research, the majority of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts and change their minds before completing a purchasing transaction. The joint panel survey, which drew more than 10,000 respondents, revealed that 75 percent of online consumers have abandoned shopping carts in the past three months. An online shopping cart is a term used to describe how an e-commerce site keeps track of the items each customer has chosen to purchase. When the shoppers are ready to pay, they are able to review the merchandise they have collected in their carts and proceed with the checkout process. When asked why they're abandoning online shopping carts, 31 percent of respondents claimed they simply changed their minds. Another 24 percent decided that the shipping and handling costs were too expensive. What is happening to these lost sales? Thirty-nine percent of the survey respondents did not purchase the items at all. Another 26 percent purchased the product from a competitor, while 17 percent went offline to get it. The remaining 18 percent did return to the same site at a later time to complete the transaction. Even though consumers regularly abandon shopping carts, they are still returning to the site to make purchases. In fact, 58 percent of the survey respondents stated they went back to the online store, and, of those people, 53 percent made purchases during subsequent visits. Furthermore, 74 percent of online buyers say they are very satisfied with their overall online buying experience. Predictably, the study indicated the items most often abandoned are also the ones online consumers are buying most frequently: books, music, computer software, computer hardware and apparel. For more information about the study, visit http://www.bisrate.com/ and http://www.npd.com/.
Copyright © 1999 KDnuggets