Excessive Shipping Costs – Top Reason for Shopping Cart Abandonment

I love Guinness.

However, ever since an Irish friend has recommended me to try Beamish, I’ve been asking about it in every grocery (and liquor) store around. Unfortunately, to no avail…

Finally, I’ve decided to look for it online. Luckily, I was able to find an online store — located within just 50 miles from me — that carried it. “Wow! How terrific!” I thought.

I added a four-pack to my shopping cart, and proceeded to checkout. Having reached the “Enter Zip for estimated shipping” field, I’ve entered mine, and oh my… Here’s what I’ve seen:

Did you know that 7 to 9 out of 10 online shopping carts get abandoned? Yes, between 70% and 88% of online customers leave the shopping cart without completing their purchase! And guess what the main reason is…

Per Forrester, the top reason for online shopping cart abandonment is excessive shipping costs with 44% of consumers dropping out under the shock of that “shipping and handling” field [more here]. ComScore echos these findings, revealing that as much as 55% of online customers abandon their shopping carts when shipping costs made “the total purchase cost more than expected” [more here]. My above case exemplifies it better than anything. Four pints of beer that cost $10 shouldn’t cost 246% of their price to ship — especially when I am only one-hour drive away from the store’s physical location.

If you run an online store, re-think your approach today. Whenever possible, offer free shipping (over a certain amount, of course) to (a) encourage greater spending, and (b) take the “shipping cost” stress out of the equation.

Is Your Business Local? Target Your Online Advertising Accordingly!

A recent study by EyeTrackShop (ETS) has revealed that due to the way Facebook users view it (see ETS’ heatmap below), “Facebook’s page post ad visually outperforms its standard ad.” The ads that imitate posts on your timeline yield “200% higher visibility” than the right sidebar ads [more here].

However, regardless of the types of ads that you use (Facebook, Twitter, paid search campaigns, etc), before wasting your advertising dollars, tweak your settings to display your ad only to your target audience. For example, if you run a taxi service which covers Washington, DC and vicinities, no need to bid on taxi-related keywords/key-phrases nationally. Serve your ads only to Internet users in DC, Northern Virginia, and Southern Maryland.

Here is a Facebook “page post ad” that I couldn’t help but spot on my timeline yesterday night:

While, there are other things that could be improved here, the main one that jumps at me is that they are located in (and servicing!) Southern California. Malibu is 2,700 miles away from me. No matter how well they do their job, there is absolutely no sane way that they can wash my windows. Why waste the money on serving this ad to me?