According to recent research by us at Feed, 68% of UK consumers have abandoned an online retail site simply because of the payment process. More than half of these (57%) left because the process was too complicated, while 46% didn’t complete the transaction as the merchant didn’t offer them their payment option of choice.
The fate of an online purchase is decided in a split second. There are many reasons why they are aborted and baskets are abandoned. The psychology is, unsurprisingly, not dissimilar to what you might experience in the physical world, but there are certain important differences in behaviour that the virtual world encourages.
If you change your mind about things you’ve bought in a shop, it’s a lot harder to dump them and leave. The physical contact with an item starts to create an emotional attachment and makes it that bit harder to abort the purchase, especially when coupled with the physical effort in visiting a shop, browsing and deciding what to purchase.
Of course, the speed and user experience of a website is critical. If your site isn’t fast and easy to navigate through the buying process, customers will fall by the wayside. Restrictive payment options are also a barrier to purchase – as is a laborious registration process. Consumers online are very short on patience and will not tolerate any deficiencies in this. So if we take that as belt and braces and an absolute given, what are other ways can we save the basket?
The answer doesn’t just lie at the end of the funnel. Everything about shopping is an intricate, seductive dance to the checkout process. Every step and move towards it has the capability of going wrong and finishing in a less than happy ending.
We have to create the immersive experience of real world shopping. We have to give customers more than the opportunity to treat online shopping like a functional transaction. Think of the billions that are spent by brands to make their shops look, feel and smell amazing, hiring the most qualified staff that can act as brand ambassadors. Then there’s the packaging of a product; the bag in which you carry it home. We need to make an online shop look, sound and feel like a superb evocation of the brand. That last word – “brand” – is important. It’s the human part of a product, the personality – what connects flesh and blood to the inanimate object.
I would stick my neck out and say that the tighter the bond between customer and brand, the less likely they are to abandon their basket in the end.
Matt Lynch is managing director at Feed
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