It is disheartening for any online retailer when online shoppers abandon shopping carts before completing the checkout process. If you are an online retailer who has struggled hard to bring in traffic, designed website focused on accessibility and merchandised products that are attractive to consumers, it would be waste of your effort if a visitor adds products to the shopping cart, and then suddenly abandons it. High shopping cart abandonment leads to loss of business, finally resulting in negative ROI.
There are many reasons which compel users to “not to buy” products. I am not going to discuss all the reasons that influence them to take this decision, but I will address only one factor that has been the major driving force behind cart abandonment according to statistics.
Recently, I came across two top retail websites that had this issue. These websites are definitely not performing poorly in the retail ecommerce market. The point I want to stress here is that these kinds of mistakes can cost you in terms of shoppers, especially new ones. I did this small analysis by taking on the role of an online shopper.
The price of the product given below was $59.99. I was under the impression that this is the final price I would have to pay to get the product. But when I visited the next page (the page shown below) after adding the product to the shopping cart, I was in for a surprise (definitely not pleasant).
What did I see there? To get this product I have to pay an additional amount which is equal to almost half of the product price?
Why was I not told that “shipping and other expenses are not included in the product price” or that the price of the product was “exclusive of shipping and other charges” in the product page itself. This website had given this information in the help section, but there should have been some indication on the product page communicating that it is not the final pricing (especially for a new visitor who is not familiar with the layout of the site). Making everything apparent in the product page will definitely minimize the cases of abandonment.
Consider dell website for example…
Here is the write up in the product page…
Here is the write up in the terms of sale page….
Shipping Charges; Taxes; Title; Risk of Loss. Shipping and handling are additional unless otherwise expressly indicated at the time of sale.
Another major mistake that should be avoided by the online retailers is adding extra product without user’s consent. I recently observed this in
These kinds of mistakes definitely irritate online shoppers and they will exit your site without a backward glance, leaving you with an abandoned cart and failed conversion. If you have anything to say along the same lines, please feel free to comment.
5 comments:
Shopping cart abandonment is a major problem for e-tailers. They need to make clear on the product detail pages other costs, including shipping and handling fees.
I also get irritated by sites that automatically add products to my shopping cart without my consent. For instance, Handango.com would automatically add the $5 download protection. I would always have to remove it from my cart.
I wrote up my own personal shopping cart abandonment experience: http://ecommerce.mediachase.com/blogs/ecf/archive/2008/06/04/my-real-world-shopping-cart-abandonment-experience-proflowers-com.aspx. But in the end, Pro Flowers did the right thing and won me back.
Don’t forget the websites that make you proceed through a registration process before checking out and also make you wait until you get to checkout to tell you that the product is out of stock. At this point customers get so frustrated they usually leave the website without buying anything.
Nice information about e-commerce and i must say that it contains good stuff. E-commerce is a cost-effective way to market your products or services to a discerning range of audience rather than isolate and limit yourself to the walk-in crowds at your retail outlet. Here i like to share about demellows.com that is very helpful E-Commerce website that sell your wares to your designated target market locally as well as internationally. An E-commerce website keeps your online shop running 24 hours a day throughout the year. I took service from it and find it very helpful.
Thank you for your insight on Ecommerce. I agree for Ecommerce web site owner, they should point out any other extra postage or handling, instead of just showing the retail fees.
how can the prices will be overcome?
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