PayPal: Shopping cart abandonment rates rise

[pepperfield]

[cnbc.com...]

PayPal has released new survey data showing why online consumers leave their shopping carts behind. Survey participants were asked to tell which reasons were "very important" in abandoning their purchases.

* High shipping charges: 46%
* Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
* Lack of money: 36 percent
* Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
* Wanted to shop offline: 26%
* Couldn't find preferred pay option: 24%
* Item was unavailable at checkout: 23%
* Couldn't find customer support: 22%
* Concerned about security of credit card data: 21%

Re: Wanting to look for a coupon.

What solutions are there so they don't leave to search for a coupon?

[edited by: lorax at 2:11 am (utc) on July 16, 2009]

[jbinbpt]

Offer a coupon good on their second purchase.

[Digmen1]

If they wanted to comparison shop (37%) why did they click on a product and go to a shopping cart?
They have seen the price, so surely they should have made their mind up that the price was OK for them.

[PCInk]

I almost always click add to basket when comparison shopping. This is because most sites flatly refuse to give you the shipping charges clearly. When you add to basket you might see these charges. The delivery price is part of the comparison.

[rachel123]

re: comparison shopping

I too always add to cart and then do comparison shopping - there are a couple reasons for this - first, to find out shipping and/or tax, as mentioned above. Secondly, most (good) sites will save your cart for you. If I decide to buy from website A after comparison shopping at B and C, I don't have to go thru the trouble of finding the product and all the options I want again - I just go back and finish the sale.

[jake66]

I almost always click add to basket when comparison shopping. This is because most sites flatly refuse to give you the shipping charges clearly.

I've had the occasional customer say this to me, or something along the lines of I 'hide' my shipping rates.

The shipping rates are located in a link directly 1 spot above the Contact/email link.. which nobody seems to have any difficulty finding to complain about something. :) Some people just don't look.

[dpd1]

One of the numerous bad changes they made at PP over the last couple years, is that when the single item payment page comes up, it's automatically in the folded position, which does not show the shipping amount. You have to click on that triangle thing to fold it down. Which I think could be missed by people.

I don't trust polls though. People aren't going to be honest. They may give other answers, but I would bet that not having enough money is a big part of it. People think they want something, then they see the total at the end and realize they're high for even thinking about spending that much... It's 'wish shopping'... This is what I would buy if I actually had money... But I don't, so oh well... >Cancel.

I've never had anybody complain about not showing the shipping until the end. But then, I charge a fair shipping. Somebody wanted to charge me over $18 for a UPS ground box that was less than a pound and 6" square the other day. I hit cancel. Stuff like that is just a blatant f-u to the customer. It's insulting to people's intelligence more than anything.

[ITGuy2009]

I think nowadays a good number of people will always try and find a coupon code or promotion code before "finally" ordering an item. We've noticed a lot of traffic coming from websites that post coupon codes for our site, so we know people look for them and will use them. On a side note, we've noticed some people come from a website with a coupon code and then order and not actually use the coupon code. We've also noticed people search for 'sitename.com promo code', etc...and end up at our site.