E-commerce Statistics 2009

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First off, we wanted to know what puts a user off buying online. Is it bad design, difficult checkouts or simply changing minds?

We found the following results.

Broken checkout that stops purchase completion - 45.16%
Checkout requesting too much information - 38.71%
Confusing Checkout - too many steps - 24.19%
Lack of company information, returns info etc? - 20.97%
Unexpected shipping charges - 51.61%
Other - 17.74%

As we expected, broken checkouts are the main cause of abandoned shopping carts at around 45%.

Among others, the 'other' category included:

- Their own credit/debit card not working
- A feeling of a lack of security

For more results see our post What stops a buyer buying?

Next we were keen to find out what visitors to an e-commerce site actually shopped online for and most importantly, how much they are willing to spend.

The top five products to buy online (according to our survey) are:

1. Books
2. Holidays
3. Music, DVD's & Video Games
4. Electricals
5. Clothing

It is worth noting that 66% of our survey participants restricted themselves to spending a max. of £500 online in one purchase.

We have loads more results including Christmas shopping habits at our post Who shops for what online?

Another question (but not he last!) we wanted to gather information on was what actually persuaded someone to buy online in the first place? The results were brilliant for this question with the top three results being:

1) Search Engine
2) Previous knowledge (used before or well known brand)
3) Recommendation

An excellent result for someone who works for an SEO company ;-)

It was also quite clear that users were more than savvy enough to know that they should research a company before buying online. 71% of our survey participants looked to online reviews before buying. Makes a pretty strong case for good customer service doesn't it!?

We have more results on the Persuading an online sale blog post.

PoLR provide e-commerce systems and SEO to clients throughout the UK. We believe in basing out opinions on fact and so, carried out the survey to back up our advice. We hope you find it useful and please feel free to use the statistcs but please credit us with the result (www.polr.co.uk)

Thanks!