E-commerce stats that help explain your abandonment issues… Cart abandonment, we’ve all been there – as a shopper we have done the abandoning. Whether it’s the guilty pleasure of adding items you know you won’t buy to the cart, seeing the total amount and backing out or being turned off by obnoxious shipping revealed upon checkout. Do we ever stop to think about the ecommerce retailers that feel the sharp sting of our abandonment? No, we don’t. As a retailer, understanding cart abandonment trends can go a long way in easing the deep, emotional pain of an empty cart. Reading and recognising trends isn’t the only solution though. Developing strategies to combat cart abandonment is key to decreasing its rates.
- Tuesday Doomsday… It turns out that Tuesday has the highest rates of cart abandonment in the whole week whilst there is no surprise that Saturday between 8pm and 9pm have the lowest rates of cart abandonment. Test out free shipping or a storewide discount specifically for Tuesdays to coax customers into clicking that ‘checkout’ button.
- It’s not me, it’s you… Customers all have different reasons for abandoning their carts – addressing these issues can not only lead to a decrease in cart abandonment but could also lead to an improved consumer-retailer relationship. The highest reported reason that customers abandon their carts at 28% is unexpected shipping costs. Advertising shipping costs clearly or even ensuring that shipping information is accessible reduces this trend as consumers are ultimately turned off by spending more than expected. Creating an account is a time consuming process that is a huge turn off for customers; 23% to be exact. The large appeal of online shopping is the ease and convenience – having to create an online account before a purchase defeats this.
- Is your sector at risk? Different sectors that offer e-commerce have varying rates of cart abandonment, perhaps due to the nature of the purchases in each sector. Travel has the highest rate of cart abandonment with 80.4%. This can be attributed to hidden tariffs and the additional costs that flight bookings can incur. The close second highest sector at risk is the financial sector with 79.3% abandoning their carts. Financial services purchases are often time consuming, with an arduous application process that can lead to abandonment as consumers lose interest. Tackle your cart abandonment issues and maybe your Tuesday won’t be so lonely…Bing helps you stick to your New Year’s resolution New Year’s resolutions very rarely stick, on December 31st you are vowing to go to the gym and eat healthy. Instead it’s January 2nd and you’re convincing yourself that you deserve a cheat day and that your body needs rest. Recent years have seen a rise in importance placed on health and fitness, whether it’s increased research or simply an awareness of adverse affects of poor health. Search engine Bing is honing on this growing trend by including health and fitness specific updates within the search results. This development is aimed to improve user experience and make it easier to locate health information. Are you new to working out? Search ‘exercise’ on Bing and a carousel of at-home or gym workouts appears in the results. These exercises can be filtered based on difficulty, target area and equipment, basically a free workout guide that can be changed at any time. This function also extends to those that are food conscious. Not only can you search specific recipes or dietary requirement recipes but you can also manage your calorie intake. Bing provides an automatic result when the calorie count of a specific amount of a particular food is searched. So if you’re sitting on the couch, unsure of where to start with your new healthy 2017 resolution, jump onto Bing and plan a workout. Written by Katreena Pevec
