Shopping cart crimes
(cross posted at the iPerceptions Blog: Turn up the Silence)
In the case of the abandoned shopping cart vs. mankind, we all plead guilty.
We’ve all done it before, both on and offline. We’ve all left her cold and lonely in the middle of an aisle, or simply quit in the middle of an online transaction. Shame on us? Well, not really.
As it turns out, online and offline shopping cart abandonment occurs for pretty much the same reasons- long checkout processes, unclear prices, and insufficient information. The average attention span of an Internet user is about 8 seconds. This makes my 5-year-old son more focused and thus more likely to buy than the average person… bad news for my credit card!
There are so many reasons why we fill up online shopping carts without ever having the intention to purchase in the first place. For most shopping sites, it seems like the only way to add up prices of items, check shipping costs and taxes, or simply compile everything you like in one place is by adding it to the shopping cart. Once you’ve gathered whatever information you were looking for, that’s when you commit your abandonment crime.
For e-commerce websites, it has never been more important to measure intent and task completion. A simple online survey software can help you answer questions about why visitors come to your website and if they were able to accomplish what they came for. These answers will not only provide you with insight to predict future behavior, but will also allow you to pinpoint areas that require change or improvement.
Take 4Qsurvey.com. Our primary goal is the account sign-up (not transactional, but just as well). According to Google Analytics, our conversion rate has fluctuated between 3% and 4%, which would appear as though between 96% and 97% of visitors are “abandoning.” In reality, however, only 15% (on average) of our visitors are onsite to actually create an account. Everyone else is “pre-transactional.” The task completion rate for visitors who are onsite to create an account averages out at 84%. This means that the real conversion abandonment figure stands at only 16%.
Looks like marketers should stop obsessing about completed transactions and start shifting their focus to pre (and post) -transactional behavior.
In the case of the abandoned shopping cart vs. mankind, we all plead guilty.
We’ve all done it before, both on and offline. We’ve all left her cold and lonely in the middle of an aisle, or simply quit in the middle of an online transaction. Shame on us? Well, not really.
As it turns out, online and offline shopping cart abandonment occurs for pretty much the same reasons- long checkout processes, unclear prices, and insufficient information. The average attention span of an Internet user is about 8 seconds. This makes my 5-year-old son more focused and thus more likely to buy than the average person… bad news for my credit card!
There are so many reasons why we fill up online shopping carts without ever having the intention to purchase in the first place. For most shopping sites, it seems like the only way to add up prices of items, check shipping costs and taxes, or simply compile everything you like in one place is by adding it to the shopping cart. Once you’ve gathered whatever information you were looking for, that’s when you commit your abandonment crime.
For e-commerce websites, it has never been more important to measure intent and task completion. A simple online survey software can help you answer questions about why visitors come to your website and if they were able to accomplish what they came for. These answers will not only provide you with insight to predict future behavior, but will also allow you to pinpoint areas that require change or improvement.
Take 4Qsurvey.com. Our primary goal is the account sign-up (not transactional, but just as well). According to Google Analytics, our conversion rate has fluctuated between 3% and 4%, which would appear as though between 96% and 97% of visitors are “abandoning.” In reality, however, only 15% (on average) of our visitors are onsite to actually create an account. Everyone else is “pre-transactional.” The task completion rate for visitors who are onsite to create an account averages out at 84%. This means that the real conversion abandonment figure stands at only 16%.
Looks like marketers should stop obsessing about completed transactions and start shifting their focus to pre (and post) -transactional behavior.
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