Abandonment issues
High delivery costs are the no.1 reason for abandoning online shopping baskets, according to new research from B2C Europe. The research, which was conducted for B2C Europe by Bluebeez, analysed consumers’ shopping habits online across eight major European markets, and in particular why someone would abandon their online purchases.
According to B2C Europe: “The research found that a remarkable 79% of consumers abandoned an online purchase at least once within the last six months, with 39% of consumers abandoning a shopping basket at least once a month.
“Although some online retailers have strategies in place to win back customers, the research reveals that only 3% of consumers would always return to complete the purchase.”
Looking at why consumers abandoned their online baskets, Bluebeez found:
- 40% of respondents stated that the cost of delivery was too high
- 33% of respondents stated they simply wanted to compare prices and get a feel of the total price (and so they were doing the online equivalent of “just browsing”)
- 20% of respondents said that their preferred payment method wasn’t available.
The other reasons given for the basket-abandonments included long delivery times (15%) and lack of information about returns (11%).
Commenting on the findings, Rianne Klein Geltink, Sales and Marketing Director of B2C Europe, said: “Most e-tailers will have customers who abandon purchases, but many do not pay enough attention to the reasons why.”
Klein Geltink added: “It’s not enough to focus purely on the number of sales when analysing the success of the business; you need to take into account the true cost of lost sales.
“When you have large volumes of purchases going through your website the abandonment rates may seem insignificant, but it’s important to remember that you could be able to achieve an additional 30% in sales and revenue for the business.
“Recently, we have seen millions of pounds worth of sales online due to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Inevitably, this means that online retailers have seen an increase in website traffic with customers filling their shopping baskets with bigger quantities of products. Consequently, the number of abandoned sales at checkout is even greater. Therefore, online retailers must deal with this issue in order to prepare for the next flurry of sales activity – Christmas.”
B2C Europe has used the findings from the survey to create The Ultimate Guide To Your Abandoned Sales, which provides online retailers with tips on how to convert browsers into buyers and reduce abandonment rates. The guide is available from a micro-site which also features a calculator tool which allows online retailers to find out how much they could be losing in additional sales a month.
To download the mini-guide click here.
The survey was completed by 2,442 people across the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Germany.
