Here’s the Real Reason Online Shoppers Ditch Their Carts Before Checkout

Cart abandonment is a familiar phenomenon for both online shoppers and retailers, but for the latter, it’s a constant source of frustration. What is it, most wonder, that will get customers to stick around through checkout?

According to a new survey of 1000 U.S. consumers, the biggest pain point is a complicated checkout process, which 87 percent said will make them ditch a site before entering payment details. Even more concerning to e-commerce businesses should be the fact that 55 percent said that they would never return to a site if this is the case.

Splitit, the company that conducted the study via Google Consumer Survey, isn’t without skin in the game — it’s a payments-solutions company that enables customers to split purchases into monthly installments, thereby encouraging them to follow through even if they can’t afford to pay in one lump sum — but other research in the field backs up its findings.

Several recent studies have put the shopping cart abandonment rate for desktop shoppers at upwards of 70 percent, with mobile shoppers jumping ship at even higher rates.

Interestingly, younger consumers seem to be more patient than older ones: Splitit found that only 12 percent of millennials would abandon a purchase before following through with a lengthy checkout process, compared to 90 percent of shoppers aged 55-plus. Those over age 45 were also more turned off by excessive advertising, with 28 percent citing it as a reason they would leave a site before purchasing, compared to 18 percent of millennial shoppers.

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