November 06, 2006

Shopping Cart Abandonment

The Marketing Experiments Blog featured an article about shopping cart abandonment. The article stated that nearly sixty percent of shopping carts are abandoned online.

My question to all of you is this. Assuming you have done everything possible to eliminate problems in the check-out process, is there anything wrong with a sixty percent shopping cart abandonment rate?

In a store, you don't physically abandon your shopping cart, leaving ice cream sitting in the aisle for a store employee to restock. You have a social contract with the store. You respect people, and don't want to create extra work for employees. Worse, you don't want to get caught abandoning your shopping cart. You might get kicked-out of the store. You might have to purchase the melted ice cream.

Online, the social contract breaks down. Who is going to penalize you for abandoning the shopping cart? The shopping cart becomes much more of a "wish list" than a "shopping cart".

Assuming your business has done everything in its power to eliminate check-out problems, an abandoned shopping cart is a non-issue. Don't feel frightened about an issue that isn't always a problem.

1 comment:

  1. Good feedback Jeff, thanks for leaving the comment.

    When viewed as additional data that the marketer can use to help the customer in her shopping experience, shopping cart abandonment becomes a positive.

    ReplyDelete

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