Abandoned Basket Syndrome: not just the retail sector!
How A Digital Marketing Agency Improves Basket Abandonment
Our recent article The Very Sad Tale of the Abandoned Basket explored the growing trend for customers to abandon their online baskets, and looked at what marketers can do to try and persuade customers to complete their purchase. In that article we explained that the average basket abandonment rate from 500 leading global retail brands is 74.4%! But that got us thinking: is it only the retail sector that is struggling with abandoned baskets? The answer is very categorically NO! As can be seen from the image below, many other sectors are also suffering from different levels of abandoned basket syndrome:Let’s explore each of them briefly in turn. We will look at specific reasons for why baskets are abandoned in that particular sector and see if there are any common themes as compared with the retail sector we explored in our previous article. We will also consider why some sectors have a lower abandonment rate than others to see if there are lessons to be learned.Fashion – 67.4%Interestingly this is the lowest abandonment rate of any sector. There could be three main reasons for this:
- Customers are loyal to their brand and the user experience of that brand. This makes the purchase process both easier and more habitual than in some other sectors;
- Leading on from the above, the fashion world moves quickly and operates more on a “must have it now” basis than many other sectors: hence there is a shorter consideration time in the purchasing process;
- Interestingly, consumer habits in the fashion sector include an increased willingness to return unsuitable goods. This makes seeing a purchase through to completion less of an issue than it appears to be for other sectors – sometimes consumers even purchasing a product in multiple sizes – as they know they can return anything they don’t want to keep.