Abandoned Shopping Carts

When I was a kid, I often rode at the front of the shopping trolley when Mum was doing the household weekly grocery buy. Having loaded all the groceries into the car (brown paper bags, in those days), Mum would wheel the trolley over to the designated trolley bay. I remember noticing even then that not all shoppers did this: some Mothers would look around and, upon noticing that no-one was 'really' looking, leave the trolleys astrew in the carpark for the supermarket junior to come and collect.

Not long after I became a shopping trolley chaser myself. Things have changed, however. The larger chains are making us 'rent' trolleys; either a one-dollar or two-dollar coin can give us access to shopping trolleys (which we can redeem upon return).

But not everyone is physically shopping anymore, with a lot of us shopping on-line. And look out vendors, cos' there's a lot of shopping trolleys - or 'Carts' - that aren't being returned. So much so that shoppers are abandoning their trolleys / carts - with all items intact - before they proceed to checkout. A survey conducted in 2006 by Marketing Sherpa indicated that 59.8% of on-line shoppers are browsing, adding items to their cart, but then leaving the arcade without paying.

Our CEO is passing around a book at work at the moment called Web Design for ROI (Lance Loveday & Sandra Niehaus). Amongst all of the wonderfully presented 'Return On Investment' tips they provide for online businesses, Loveday & Niehaus' slant on 'abandoned shopping carts' is truly thought provoking. Posing a similar scenario in an actual supermarket, the store manager would consider abandoned shopping trolleys around the checkout area as an emergency of epic proportions! 'Web Design for ROI' paints this extremely serious picture of how online businesses are simply not paying anywhere near enough attention to their (lack of) online sales.

There's always a flip-side to every argument. Sure, we've all walked through a physical bricks & mortar supermarket and noticed something not-quite-right. A plain-paper wrapped parcel of cabana precariously nestled in amongst the chocolate biscuit section; a brand-new children's toy sitting on top of a stack of bananas; it's not hard to work out that shoppers are finicky and clearly change their minds from time-to-time. But on a SCALE OF 59.8% ABANDONMENT (sorry for shouting) the major chains would employ an armed security guard at every aisle-corner to monitor every mother & child's movement after inserting items into their trolley.

(Note: Maybe next they'll design shelves and trolleys like mini-bar fridges in hotels: when an item is removed, you can't put it back... and when you've put something into your trolley it can only be released by the check-out supervisor).

Shopping on the Internet is different. I can literally purchase anything in my underwear because no-one is looking. So why aren't online businesses adjusting their sales 'closure' strategies to suit the medium? Is it because they simply don't know that shoppers are engaging in commercial mutiny? Are they checking their monthly / weekly / daily statistics? Was their shopping cart tested? Heaven forbid their shopping cart is broken! Is the cart usability 'usable'? Is their service provider asking them the questions that need to be asked? The list goes on...

According to Marketing Sherpa, they believe there are four important steps in addressing the issue. 1: Promote return / exchange policies. 2: Post reassuring security icon(s). 3: Include privacy and trust language next to fields asking for personal data. 4: Remind shoppers of their abandoned cart.

As the song lyric suggests, it certainly is a small world - after all. And as far as real-time, online credit card payment
e-commerce solutions are concerned, it's only going to keep on getting smaller. Dear vendor, before taking the big leap into the e-commerce pool, have you checked that all the boxes are ticked? And - most importantly - can you afford to have 59.8% of your shoppers 'virtually' dumping their shopping carts at your checkout?

(Note: I'm glad Mum never abandoned our shopping trolley... I'd still be sitting at the front of it).