If you’ve tracked visits to your ecommerce site lately, you’ve likely noticed that as many as half of your shoppers got cold feet at the last minute…right before the part where they were supposed to click “Pay Now.”

Known as shopping cart abandonment, it’s a major issue that ecommerce technology companies and consultants are tackling.  

The reasons are plenty why a shopper would go through the effort to fill his or her cart and then bail out. Uncertainty of the economy is likely one major cause. A horse racing fan would be happy to find, say, a bronze replica of Mine That Bird, the 2009 Kentucky Derby winner, on your site. But then things like sales quotas and job security come to mind. Your shopper then becomes just a visitor.

Well, according to a new ecommerce report by PayPal and comScore, the No. 1 reason for abandoned carts is sticker shock. Not on the product itself but on the cost to ship that product. In a poll of U.S. consumers, 45 percent said they had abandoned an order at the last minute because of higher-than-expected shipping fees.

So what’s a solution to this? The report indicates that 40 percent of those people who cited shipping costs as the No. 1 reason would not have abandoned the purchase if the retailer had provided shipping fees upfront. Transparency is key here, folks.

Another reason why shoppers bail, the study says, is concern over credit card security—21 percent.

What does that mean in dollars? According to a March report by Javelin Strategy & Research, this fear equated to $21 billion in lost sales in 2008! That’s a lot of abandoned carts.

Nothing will eliminate this fear because it’s based in reality. Identity theft and credit card fraud are growing exponentially. And so are the headlines of data breaches.

But there are steps you can take to decrease shopping cart abandonment and increase shopper confidence:

• Go through the effort to get your site scanned for security and PCI compliance. Make sure you address any known vulnerabilities immediately.  And work with your PCI vendor to ensure that scans are conducting regularly, at least weekly.
• Display the security seal you earned proudly.
• Make your contact information prominent. And provide an address. Your prospects want to feel as if you’re a real company with a real locale. Not some faceless store in the netherworld of virtual space.
• Make your privacy policy prominent too. Communicate clearly that you won’t be using your prospects’ info for anything other than processing their orders.
• Provide product reviews if applicable. When a shopper sees customer reviews, there is just something real they bring to the table. Reviews convey a sense of community…and hence a feeling of security.

You can’t do much about the economy part—36 percent of respondents said “lack of money” was the primary reason for changing their minds. But with a little work, you can do a lot to inspire more confidence.

‘Till Next Time,

Joan,
The eSecurityDiva