E-Commerce Basics: Top Reasons For Shopping Cart Abandonment

Shopping cart abandonment is frustrating. Abandonment of course means an incomplete transaction. A study completed by SeeWhy, a company that tracks shopping cart abandonment rates, reports the average across industries in October 2009 was 71%. According to Forrester Research, the top reasons for shopping cart abandonment include:

- Prices for items and shipping too high

- Customer not ready to purchase

- Comparison shopping

- Second thoughts on price

- Wanted to save for later

So for all of these reasons it pays to hold the cart contents. A study done quite a while ago found that 28% of shoppers took longer than a day to convert, and 14% longer than a week. Some advice on getelastic.com says to make sure you are leaving persistent cookies that hold customer contents in a cart, and make sure these cookies cause items to stay in a cart for at least 30 days. A customer may return to your site after comparison shopping or deciding to make a purchase and this way their items are still in their carts.

Measure your customer behavior. Include repeat visits and actual conversions. It will be impossible to determine why customers are abandoning carts but you will be able to tell how many abandonments will result in actual sales.