According to research conducted by the university of Glasgow in conjunction with marketing an technology company Amaze, 87% of online shoppers abandon their basket before paying whilst 75% of shoppers claimed that they would return later on to complete any transactions.

The research was conducted to in order to provide an insight into why people still abandon their shopping baskets even though there as been vast improvements in ecommerce site usability. What was also found interestingly is a window shopping phenomenon and that people take pleasure in browsing ecommerce sites.

The report indentified three types of online shopper – vague, cost conscious and window shoppers. Vague shoppers like to seek more information before completing purchases and made up 42% of shoppers from the research. Cost conscious shoppers are ones who look for bargains before buying and may opt out of buying certain products one the postage costs are taken into consideration. These made up a further 42% of shoppers according to the research.

Lastly 16% of the shoppers were labeled as window shoppers and these type of shoppers have no intention of purchasing the items even though they add products to the basket.

These findings are quite intriguing and it is interesting that parallels can be drawn from conventional high street shopping. On very basic levels you can make sure your products are price competitive and that full descriptions of the products in question are clearly given. Having detailed descriptions can stop people from leaving the site to find more information which can increase the chances a customer will buy from you.

As a high percentage of people are ‘shopping around’ then having clear customer reviews can also be effective as word of mouth and recommendations are powerful tools in persuading people to buy. Having reviews much like with having detailed descriptions can help deter people from straying off the site.
Lastly clearly displaying and being upfront on costs is recommended. So any additional costs such as VAT and postage should be addressed as soon as possible so that the user does not feel duped.

Of course window shopping is something that unfortunately cannot be controlled, however making sure that you give your customers as much information as possible can be a simple step to ensuring that people continue all the way to your sites checkout.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 5:40 pm and is filed under Industry News, Search. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.