Friday, December 24, 2010

Abandonment Issues

While shopping online, a Web site attempted to mouse-trap me - something that hasn't happened in quite a while. What makes it worth noting is that they did so because I had added an item to a shopping cart, then saw that they wanted an outrageous amount for shipping and handling, so I decided to leave. Immediately, a JavaScript window popped up.

There are items in your shopping cart.

I clicked "OK" - as if to say, "Yes, I'm aware of that, and I want to leave anyway." But I was stuck on the page. So I figured clicking "cancel" was the correct thing to do. I was still stuck. So I removed the item from the cart and tried to leave. Nope. In the end, I had to disable JavaScript to close the window and get away from the site.

Skipping past the notion that mouse-trapping a user is evil, I had a sense of the reason they were trying to do this: studies suggest that a very large percentage of shopping carts on e-commerce sites are abandoned - people leave without completing the sale, and this upsets and perplexes online merchants, who are desperate to find a solution.

My sense is that in trying to remedy a short-term problem, an online business is creating a far more serious long-term problem: they are damaging trust. In this instance, I don't think they are gaining much by doing so - there may be a few people who accidentally closed the window, and would be thankful the site prevented them from doing so, but far more people intended to leave - and hijacking the browser will only serve to ensure that these same users won't come back.

In my case, I was able to find the item elsewhere - at a slightly higher price, but free shipping - but had I been unable to do so, I don't expect I would have gone back to the same merchant, even if I was resigned to pay the shipping price. Chances are, a company that resorts to mouse-trapping to force a user to complete an order is going to behave in other ways that are offensive and self-serving. Or maybe not, but given the experience, I'm not willing to take the chance.

It occurred to me that users may visit a Web site to research product information before making a purchase. I've found a few sources that suggest a number, but none of them present a credible case for their estimate. I suppose there aren't any reliable statistics on this behavior, as it would be difficult to determine if a first-time buyer had abandoned the site previously - which is rather a shame, because if merchants were aware that "a person might visit your site five times before making a purchase," perhaps they would be a bit less distressed buy shopping card abandonment, or at least they would realize that it isn't the end of the world ... unless they mistreat the customer.

Or more likely, merchants would still see this as a problem, and seek out a consultant who could promise them a solution that would reduce the number of visits before purchasing. But my sense is, this would still result in an infinitesimal improvement to short-term sales, and it would still come at the cost of damaging the potential for more long-term engagements with customers who weren't ready to buy immediately, but who might return at a later time.

I've had meatspace encounters that are roughly analogous, generally with high-ticket items (cars and major appliances) where commissioned salesmen, in their attempt to pressure me to buy immediately, behaved in such a way that I didn't come back when I was ready to purchase.

If there's any larger lessons to be learned, it's that customer trust isn't a guarantee and, depending on the cost of the item or the convenience of switching vendors, it may take a few visits before a prospect will be comfortable enough to make a purchase - and until they reach that point, any action on your part to "make" them trust you enough to give you their business seems likely to have quite the opposite effect.

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