Why do people abandon online shopping baskets?

Research has shown that online shopping basket (aka shopping cart) abandonment is extremely high, up to 60% of shopping baskets are abandoned before the sale is closed, what I am trying to do here is list some of the reasons for abandonment, unfortunately I don’t have all the reasons or indeed all the solutions.

High delivery costs

Make all delivery charges clear to the customer, the shock of seeing the shipping cost added to the order value is one of the biggest reasons for basket abandonment.

Comparison shopping or browsing

Many surfers visit a number of online merchants, adding items to the shopping basket of each before making a decision to buy.

Often items are not bought immediately but saved for later purchase maybe not even on the same day, in fact this is very common, make it easy for them to retrieve the session.

Sometimes the person doing the browsing will not be the person making the purchase.

Site requires registration before purchase

Many online shoppers stall at the thought of registering to make a purchase, they dislike the thought of being added permanently to a database.

Checkout problems

Checkout process is too long, checkout requires too much personal information, checkout process is confusing, these are all reasons that have been cited for basket abandonment, keep the process simple, short and uncomplicated and don’t ask for unnecessary information.

Other reasons for customers abandoning a shopping basket include, internet connection problems, not being sure about security of merchant site, simply changing their mind, combined cost of all items in basket is too high.

Hope this has given you food for thought, many of the problems that occur are avoidable and a little tweaking on the merchant website can vastly improve completion of the sale.