Any serious ecommerce website will either know or want to know their shopping cart abandonment rate. This is percentage of site visitors that add products to the shopping cart then abandon it before entering the checkout stage :

In a online survey carried out by leading online consumer research company. The top 5 reasons given for customers for abandoning their shopping cart at the online checkout stage were :

1. Postage and Packing costs were too high
2. The Customer was not ready to purchase
3. Wanting to compare prices on other websites
4. Product Price was higher than the custom was willing to pay
5. They wanted to save the cart for later consideration

eRetailers, looking to reduce their shopping cart abandonment rates may could consider displaying their postage charges clearly before the checkout stage or look at reducing postage costs if the sale is over a certain value.

Its important to remember an abandoned sale doesn’t necessarily mean a lost sale either, the second and fifth most popular reasons for abandoning their cart was the customer wasn’t ready to purchase or wanted to take the purchase into consideration. So many visitors will return 1 day, 3 days or even a week later to make the purchase. Giving a visitor the ability to store or save a cart will greatly increase your chances of converting that visitor into a customer at a later date.

The key to any successful ecommerce website it dialogue, speak to your customers and ask for their reasons for buying from you. The same goes for potential customers, communicate with them to see why they haven’t brought from you.