[thelist] Article: 20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment

Diane Soini dianesoini at earthlink.net
Tue Oct 21 20:27:41 CDT 2003


On Tuesday, October 21, 2003, at 05:06 PM, 
thelist-request at lists.evolt.org wrote:

> On Monday 2003 October 20 14:19, Kevin Cannon wrote:
>> I doubt many people abadon a purchase when actually wanting to buy a
>> specific thing. That's like giving up at a shop because there's a
>> queue.
>
> If they are long enough, people do, and people have. "Screw this, let's
> go to <name of competing store> down the road, they have two registers
> open and the lines spill over clear into the aisles."

I'm not a very sophisticated shopper (I don't shop much at all.) I've 
noticed that some shopping cart systems make you have to go through the 
process to find out more details about the product. There are times 
when you have to go through the ordering process to find out things 
like a) do they offer different sizes? What are the sizes? b) What info 
are they going to want from me? Are they going to make me have to 
register and login (I hate that.) c) is the product in stock in the 
color I want? Etc. Sometimes I just use the shopping cart to go as far 
as possible before paying so I will know everything there is to know 
before I buy. I might come back later to actually complete the process.

For example, I wanted to buy a diaper for my parrot (only in the 
Internet age would there even be such a thing!). I wasn't sure what 
size, or how they would know if it would fit my bird. I read much of 
their info, but not until I started using the shopping cart did I feel 
comfortable about how they get the info they need to fit the bird 
diaper to the bird. Plus, their web site is horrific and some parts of 
it were highly unnavigable, so although there probably was info 
elsewhere, the shopping cart had the easiest info to read.

Point: I don't think statistics mean what people think they mean.

D



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