Unexpected costs drive away
customers
A PayPal survey has discovered that more than half of online
shoppers have abandoned their online shopping due to higher than expected
shipping charges.
The survey revealed that punters were walking away from
huge shopping carts because the shipping costs were out of line with
reality. Only three per cent of Canadians said they had no intention of
purchasing the item online after filling up the cart and proceeding to
the checkout. The rest all said that they were set to buy right until
they saw the cost of shipping.
Part of the problem is that sites do not
say how much it will cost to ship the goods, or other important fees such as
cross-border duties and handling fees. The other side is that some
merchants, particularly in the book selling market, depend on inflating the
cost of shipping to make any profit on the sale. This is why you see books
listed for 10 cents with a shipping cost of $3.50. The actual cost of
postage is often $1.50.
To make matters worse some etailers charge per item
rather than the cost of an over all package. It often costs the same to ship
three boxes of diet pills as it does to send one, but the customer is
charged as if they were three separate packages.
The survey also found
that 78 per cent of Canadians surveyed who abandoned a cart knew the site or
had bought from it before. 52 per cent said an ideal payment process would
involve just one click, no matter where they were shopping.
More than 43
per cent said it took too long to fill out credit card information. Another
40 per cent abandoned their shopping carts because the payment option they
wanted to use was not available.