Calling a shopping cart anything other than a shopping cart only causes confusion.

.... if you know what a shopping cart is

US
UK

Posted by: Mac on July 24, 2002 04:03 AM

 

Good point, over here "basket" works much better (although "trolley" is the direct equivalent of "cart")

Posted by: Matt Round on July 24, 2002 05:05 AM

 

Spot on, Mac. Shopping basket and shopping trolley are both in common usage in the UK, but no-one ever refers to a shopping cart. Think international, let's call it a shopping casket. Perhaps not...

I think one of the reasons that punters abandon their shopping is that they were never serious about buying in the first place. Keeping a list of things you might buy is OK, but when it comes down to it, do you really want to spend that money? And how do we measure what proportion of abandoned trolleys (sorry, carts) fit into this category? In fact, the article makes reference to this under mistake number 2.

Posted by: Alan Fisher on July 24, 2002 05:12 AM

 

Yes, they didn't take international issues into account, among other things. The article is definitely not up to the high quality levels I expect from SURL, though far better than most of what's printed elsewhere.

Posted by: Ron Zeno on July 24, 2002 10:10 AM

 

Abandoning shopping receptacles is not a question of whether the customer was ever "serious" about buying.

I routinely abandon my cart, for a boat load of reasons...

1) I want to see what the shipping and tax cost would be.

2) I am collecting a list of like items to compare.

3) I am undecided. I have a bunch of things in my Amazon cart that have been there for a month (I have gift certificates to use, otherwise I'd never shop there).

4) I'm interested, but want to come back later after I've seen whether I can get a better price. A recent pending DVD movie release was $25 on pre-order at BN.com, and $22 at Amazon. Later, Amazon's price dropped to $20, but it was not reflected in my cart. I waited until the day of the release and found the movie for $18 at a local chain store. That movie is still in my Amazon cart.

The thing is, these nutty e-commerce guys can only conceive of a shopping cart as a device to complete a sale. So when they see abandoned carts they view it as a problem to be solved. Rubbish. We users use a cart like any other tool. Maybe it's required to complete a sale, but we can use it for all sorts of other things in the meantime.

Posted by: Jack on July 24, 2002 11:39 AM

 

Jack has hit the nail on the head. Abandonment is not a function of poor cart/basket design but more to do with overall poor cost structure communication to the consumer.

What is the statistic: 66% of users abandon carts because they are only searching for tax and shipping information.

Posted by: JB on July 24, 2002 12:19 PM

 

I use a shopping cart, not only to check what the shipping and tax cost is, but also to see if they'll allow me to pay with my savings account. Quite a few sites don't tell you exactly what methods of payments that they accept. I go for the sites that take the forms of payments that I can make use of.

Posted by: Morris Cox on July 24, 2002 08:26 PM

 

Ron, they're just being their usual American selves. To most Americans, there is no world outside their country.

Posted by: Omar on July 25, 2002 03:39 AM

 

Jack - you're right, but so am I. I know that I've often put a few things in my cart at Amazon on the spur of the moment, but when it comes to spending the money I've decided that I didn't really need them. We do the same in bricks and mortar shops, don't we? Take things off the shelves, carry them around a bit and then decide not to bother.

The problem here is that people feel that, just because we put things in the cart, there must be some design flaw which is leading us to not complete the transaction. That's not the case. As discussed above, we're using the cart for our own purposes, which don't necessarily equate to buying anything.

Posted by: Alan Fisher on July 26, 2002 05:07 AM