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Online Shoppers Aren't Impulsive
Rollie Hawk writes "When it comes to online shoppers, conventional wisdom has long been divided. Some have argued that the instant nature of shopping from home over the Internet leads to quick purchases while others have contended that easy price comparisons on the Web allow buyers to do more research first. For now, it looks like the latter camp is closer to the truth.
According to a press release by ScanAlert, online shoppers are more frugal than many retailers previously thought. According to their testing, 35% take more than 12 hours to make a purchase, 21% take more than three days, and 14% take more than a week. On the average, online shoppers take 19 hours to make a purchase after the initial visit.
This has some important marketing ramifications according to ScanAlert CEO Ken Leonard. "The implication to merchants is that the shopping cart is not just a convenience factor. It must be a comfort zone to shoppers. These results were not expected."
In the press release, Leonard advised online sellers that "consumers abandon shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers. Retailers must understand, however, that almost half of all online purchases are from shoppers who leave a site after the first visit, and return -- even days later -- to buy.""
Where can I buy all the press releases from ScanAlert?
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
" online shoppers take 19 hours to make a purchase"
I hope they take bathroom breaks.
Best Windows Freeware
If you're going to wait 3-6 days to get what you ordered then you're not an impusle buyer.
I just bought the new iMac. Does this make me impulsive?
"consumers abandon shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers"
Given that online purchases involve a potential purchaser having to evaluate a virtual product, rather than something tangible, how can they be surprised? I'm dumbfounded that online sellers compare an eCart to a real shopping trolley. Are they off theirs?
The reason shoppers take their time buying items online is because they know that a better deal is just a click away! It takes no effort to hop onto a competitor's site or a deal site to see if the same item can be found cheaper. On the other hand buying at a real shop has a lower pain threshold. It becomes very easy to say "why waste gas, time, etc I'll just buy this". Not to mention that its much harder to comparision shop, or read up on what other people think, etc.
According to their testing, 35% take more than 12 hours to make a purchase, 21% take more than three days, and 14% take more than a week. On the average, online shoppers take 19 hours to make a purchase after the initial visit.
WOW! they must have really slow connections. maybe they should upgrade the 300 baud modem while they're at it.
Starsucks
The exception here is definetly eBay. By placing time restrictions on when people are able to buy items, particularly hard to find items, sellers are able to trick many buyers into believing they have to buy something.
With other vendors however, there are so many options for where you can buy things that often you have to spend weeks just comparing prices.
I've been waiting to buy "What the Bleep do we know" from Amazon.com for over two weeks. I'm not comparing prices or anything, just knowing that it takes only a second to buy it has put me in a lethargic state.
http://www.watacrackaz.com
to admit that all those online shopping carts aren't being cashed out because they're being used by online hoboes.
my friend in Nigeria, Dr NMBAGO DSUSU assures me i should always proceed quickly with any transactions i make online, the more money the quicker i should proceed.
this article is just FUD to put me off collecting my 25 MILLION DOLLARS
I'm still trying to decide which 3dfx card to get.
I must say, I use the shopping cart at thinkgeek to make it from paycheck to paycheck... I don't have enough money to buy anything, but I pile all sorts of stuff in my shopping cart... then come payday, I purchase everything that I've accumulated over the month, then am flat broke again until next payday... but I made sure to get everything I wanted... now if only they sold food...
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
I've been trying to find a good toaster oven. I can't find any reviews or sites that test these things. How am I supposed to shop on-line for items when the few reviews look like plants?
This makes sense. When I worked at a phone answering job where I took orders, a lot of people would call up ask for information then hang up to order it on line. People use the Internet to order at their convenience rather than at the convenience of the seller.
That since the web-savvy online shopper realizes the ease and convenience of online shopping, that they would also realize the ease of researching a product online before purchasing, and do so thoroughly.
The percentage that take over 4 hours have aol and most of that time is spent reconnecting and clicking out of ad pop-ups.
-Joe
"According to their testing, 35% take more than 12 hours to make a purchase, 21% take more than three days, and 14% take more than a week."
The next report will be about how many online shoppers are using 56k connections with AOL.
When you go to a store, you do not want to think about it and return to a store to buy the item. If there is something I am considering to buy, I will usually buy it because I am too lazy to go back to the store to buy it later.
I think there are a couple of reasons that the online shopper is not as impuslive. One reason is that it is much, much easier to compare prices between 10 different stores. Instead of having to choose between driving all over town and paying a few bucks more at a store nearby, a regular person will pay the extra difference to save the hassle. Online, you can easily bring up everything in seperate browser windows (or tabs as I prefer) and compare everything quite easily. Another reason is that the online shopper probably figures that what they want exists "somewhere out there" on the net. Instead of settling on some item, they will keep searching until they find the exact thing they are looking for. It's a lot easier to do this, than to drive to 10 different stores in a major metropolitan area.
The reson the shoppers abandon easily is probably because of some popular techniques the online retailers use:
- They force you to add item to cart to see the price.
- After you add item to the cart, they tell you that you have to pay sales tax
- After you add item to cart, you are told that there is a $20 shipping and handling fee, and finally...
- The item is back oredered.
Duh!The impulse buy is this thought process:
"Wow, look at that great deal! Hmm.. I'm here and its a great price, just buy it, save a trip." or "Hmm.. I'm at the store.. what else can I buy that will save me a trip?"
While online, its more like this:
"Wow, look at that great deal! Hmm.. Let me think about it, I can always come back with little effort." <Bookmark URL> <Check deal every 30-60 minutes> "Hmm.. ok I'll buy it."
Online there is no barrier of inconvience to return back to the store, therefore less of an urge to get it NOW!
I think it makes sense that web shoppers aren't implusive because there is no immediate satisfaction. It takes days to actually get your order. If you are impulsive you will probably want the item immediately and will probably go buy it in a real store.
The study does not seem to address drunken online shopping...
The owls are not what they seem
the rush of winning a bid has caused me to impulsively bid higher in the past, for things that i didn't especially need but that i had been outbid on. i wouldn't really call ebay activities shopping. shopping usually implies a need, and online shoppers usually have the savvy and the will to compare prices online, etc.
the time lag difference between shopping and buying can also be attributed to the comfort of the home--you're not standing in the store ready to make a decision; you have time to think about whether you need it, or whether the lower price on another site is worth the name-brand tradeoff, and so on. it's a good thing for consumers to really consider whether things are worth buying.
Hey it only took me about 5 minutes to decide to buy my Dell 2005FPW 20 inch LCD monitor for only $384.00+tax free shipping with Dell stackable coupons!
You see it over and over again. Humans change the technology, technology doesn't change the humans. Forever, people have believed the technology would create these new social nirvanas and patterns of behavior, but we stay the same way. We do things the same way we always have. Technology does make things faster and more convenient, but that seems about it. I suspect when we have engineered wings and laser-beam eyes, we will act in ways quite familiar to contemporary humans, minus the laser-beam eyes and wings.
im guilty of abandoning my cart at the last minute. often times, you go through the whole thing, look at the shipping charges, fill out everything, only to find something on back order. i think that if online retailers did a better job of letting you know things before you get to the shopping cart, they wouldn't have so many problems.
forty-two
No annoying shop assistants to rush you in your shopping, that's why. You can look, think about it, look some more ... have some coffee... and maybe decidede if you might buy it.
The Dutch will inherit the earth. If not, we'll settle for a bit of ocean. Beta delenda est!
Perhaps this is a retaliation against the three slashads in a row we've had :D
A wise man once said, "wtf h4x."
In my own experience, I have been able to purchase a product, for example a flat panel monitor, and been able to get the best product for my money. I can first find a product I think I want, go find some reviews (reviews from people who own one, tech reviews are nice for specs but I like to know what the real buyers thought as well) find out what is good and what is bad, decide if I can live with the bad or perhaps if one model up is better value and then shop around for the best price and compare shipping rates. It's all there and as an earlier posting said, you know it could take a few days to recieve so why not take the time and do it right.
piss off
Online shopping takes away the peer pressure to buy.
I find that buying online is less impulsive because you have mountains of research to rely on.
Lets say I see (hmmm we're on Slashdot so I'll use the computer hardware example) a new component for my rig that I absolutely must have. I'll go through many reviews first to make sure it functions, is compatible, is priced correctly, and will be a good buy.
Now lets say I'm at the supermarket deciding between the S&S brand and a gourmet brand of food. No external input for consumption, so its more likely I'll buy the gourmet on the spot.
I'd say from initial liking to final purchase takes me nearly 36 hours.
I know that whenever I hit Amazon, I have something very specific in mind that I'm looking for that I couldn't find at a brick-and-morter. In fact, any time a BM tells me they have to special order it, I hit Amazon. I think a lot of people shop this way.
Its the same for other web. People who search for products on the web are usually looking for something specific. This is, in my opinion, one reason why click through ads don't work. Most clicks I find totally irrelevant. Actually, in 10 years I've never voluntarily followed a banner ad.
Seems I turn to the web more and more these days to find specialty items I know the warehouse BMs won't carry. I buy classical musically exclusively through Amazon because most of the smaller specialty retailers in my city have been put out of business by the WalMart/Costco style mega stores.
A few years back, there were 3 classical music CD shops around. A big megachain opened, and they dedicated an entire floor to classical and lowballed all prices trying to get the volume sale. These 3 independants went under, and shortly after that, the megachain closed down/vented their classical section.
Prolly off topic but it still bugs me.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Given that I recently had a shopping cart on the Apple Store for about £10,000-worth of G5 (plus modish accessories) which I amazingly didn't consummate via credit-card, I wouldn't be too concerned about prospective customers apparently 'abandoning' their goods.
It's not like a offline shop where it's a fair amount of hassle to put stuff back on the shelves, and you'd have least half a pang of guilt if you'd spent the last forty minutes quizzing an assistant about a particular electronic widget without actually buying it - there's absolutely no commitment involved in an online 'shopping card', so 'fantasy shopping' can become a possibility.
Which, for the sake of my credit card, is probably just as well...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
i just bought over 1300$ worth of stuff from newegg and i had a wishlist/cart going for well over 4 months. on top of that i could share and 'post' it with others! while i know computer building usually entails saving and buying when something new comes out, i realize newegg needs to base its system around that form, but everywhere else can benifit from this as well
Amazon.com makes it so easy to order stuff that it's dangerous to your credit card. Every once in a while I'll get on there and splurge. No filling out name, address, or credit card details. No logging in at all. They have a nice system.
I did 90% of my Christmas shopping there last year. Take that, parking lots! Take that, crowds of shoppers!
I've abandoned tech book sellers and other smaller online retilers for this very reason. I will put things in my cart on Amazon, and leave them there for weeks or months. I don't always have the discretionary cash to buy all the books and videos that I want, but I like keeping my cart around.
Amazon does this well. If you put a used book in your cart, if that allotment of books goes away, it comes out of your cart. If an item is sold out or discontinued, it comes out of your cart. I would like even more customization, such as email notifications when things get removed from my cart, but it doesn't have that.
This type of E-commerce sophistication should be called the Ebayzinization of the world. We want auctions, we want resale markets, and we want them organized. Companies like Amazon who do this well can create monopolization effects, such as the resale book market. A lot of book sellers hate Amazon, hate the way that they get a bite of a book transaction, on damaged or used books, and don't give them (the sellers) any concession for postage, etc. When you buy a used book from somebody on Amazon, they have nothing to do with it, except to perform a middleman and something of an indemification of the transaction. i.e. if the reseller takes your money and runs, Amazon will work with you to help you get your book.
The key to all of this, is shopping cart power. I want to make wish lists on things I see - and rank them according to what things I would rather have. I can't remember all the things I see that I might like, my brain is not going to remember this, and I don't want to write it down. I want to walk up to a kiosk at a store at Christmas and pull my, and any of my trusted friends shopping carts up, much like wedding registries work. I want to buy a pal something he wants for Christmas, keep who it was anonymous, and be assured that it gets checked off and nobody else gets him the same thing.
This study should serve as a catalyst for even more customization options for major E-retailers. Places like Amazon can market capture places like Crate & Barrel (just picking one from thin air), as the cost and complexity of maintaining that kind of system begins to spiral upward, these type s of places don't want to do it for themselves anymore.
The lack of human interaction also means that you can't haggle.
The owls are not what they seem
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This describes how I make all my moderate or large online purchases to a tee (things less than 20 bucks I'll just buy right away, usually, but then they are a small, small fraction of my total online spending).
What I'd like to see is for the crap pschyological tricks to stop. For instance, some items on Amazon won't show you the price until you add them to your cart. This pretty much defeats the whole point of a shopping cart / non shopping cart, and coincidentally, the Amazon shopping cart is not something I think about in the same way as I do at other websites.
This just shows me that the people deciding how to set up their online sites do not themselves shop online very often. I often get most of the way through an order, then abandon it because a shipping charge shows up that I think is offensive, or because I reconsider my purchase. But I often go back and buy it the next day or a few days later. I have to think I'm not alone. I don't understand why retailers should be "frustrated" by this. If they would like to know why people leave, how about if they try shopping at their own site to see what it's like?
Currently hooked on AMP
Usually we're complaining about the idiots who impulsively buy v14gr4 from spammers. So I guess I'm a little surprised that they think about it for 19 hours; it seems like the "mood" would wear off before then... :)
Personally, it takes me a long time to decide to spend money on something I see on the web... but if I'm looking at it in the store, I much more frequently say something to the effect of, "Aw, what the heck?" and pick it up.
Windows isn't the answer... it's the question. NO is the answer!
I started out impulsive. Over time I learned more and more, found more resources, found more ways to compare and for me ultimately shopping on-line has become anything BUT impulsive.
There are too many things to consider to allow impulsive buying to dominate:
I suspect the frustration for vendors is akin to the neurosis around "closing the deal", much like a car dealer: "Ken!, That's a Great name....! What do I gotta do to get you to drive off the lot in this car today?" But, that's just not the way it works, or should work for informed buyers. And vendors who get that, win.
Like the article points out, I've many times shelved an item in a shopping cart to come back to it later after more research and a self-confidence in my final decision to buy (Circuit City, et. al., take note: don't cut me off on some arbitrary limit of shopping cart items... it hurts your chances (actually cost you one sale) of the final sale).
Additionally, I've found the on-line info has made me a less impulsive Brick and Mortar shopper. There are some items I refuse (still) to purchase on-line, but that doesn't stop me from using the internet to find out as much as I can about a product before going to the store. And, I've found myself now seeing an interesting item in a Brick and Mortar, and making note of the product name/manufacture and waiting until I've researched it on the internet before buying.
I think in some ways multiple factors are in force. One, shoppers just plain old want to be more informed about their purchase (I know, not ALL shoppers, but more and more). Two, vendors have done little to earn trust (ever try purchasing a tv lately? I couldn't believe the definitions I got from sales people when trying to explain to me: hdtv vs edtv; hdtv 720 vs 1080; hdtv i vs p; sacd vs cd; et. al.). So customers now armed with research capabilities hedge their bets and verify info from multiple sources before entering CC information.
Yeah right.
Another one bites the dust
Quick! Lower interest rates, let's hope they start buying more... if they keep thinking about quality and affordability of their purchases, Americans could kill the economy
Online shoppers aren't impulsive because there's no benefit to being impulsive.
If you are impulsive at Fry's or EB you get to play with your new toy right after buying it.
If you buy it online the soonest you're going to get it is the next day. Kinda kills the impulse to buy before researching....
Not to mention the fact it's a lot more of a PITA to return it.
Of course they "abandoned" the shopping carts when they had to go through almost the entire purchase process just to find out what shipping was going to cost them. It the sites had more up front shipping rate policy info, you'd see a lot fewer carts being abandoned because shoppers would gather their price info before they ever put stuff in a cart.
Like...
Fatwallet
Slickdeals
Spoofee
Ableshopper
etc. etc.
I frequently look things up on the various web sites of electronics stores, then drive to a real store to go and get it. That would count as several abandoned shopping carts, but I did actually buy.
Oh well, what the hell...
I think it is true in a lot of ways, I know one or two "Offline" impulsive shoppers, when I am walking in the street with one them they see a pair of shoes or a bag (you can guess I am talking about a woman) that she "likes" she cant help but buying it, she does not try to look for another shop for similar items or the same items but with another price/warranty/offer etc.
On the other hand, on the internet is so easy to check prices for several shops (I personally use Dealtime and with Ebay) that you could say you are reducing the search time to just about 30 minutes.
Now about the shopping cars, I think they are fine when not complex. I really hate for example the Amazon shopping cart which besides telling the goods I will by wants to push me to buy everything related to them, god, I think they can do that in the main site but not on the place where I want a simple summary of what I WILL buy.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
I tend to agree with their research: I haven't had the urge today to buy a Star Wars PC, an iMac, or a gimmicky liquid metal CPU cooler.
Entrepreneur : (noun), French for "unemployed"
1. Website is broken
2. They just won't tell me shipping costs until it's too late
3. Website hangs, freezes, or something doesn't work with Firefox, or my privacy/security settings.
4. I change my mind.
5. I get scared
6. I lose interest
7. The checkout process just takes way too long
8. They want to "verify" my credit card by calling me.
9. I have to sign an agreement.
10. They need too much personal information.
I generally have to check a few different shops before I can find one that tells you shipping costs BEFORE you enter your credit card information.
Also, some websites require you to register to make a purchase, which is often not worth the effort when someone else has it reg-free for the same price.
This is where sites like Amazon that have a "save for later" feature for shopping carts are trumping other sites that only have minimal e-commerce functionality. If a customer isn't ready to buy, but can save an interesting item for easy access later, they will be more likely to come back to that merchant and make the purchase if the price is reasonable. In addition, the convenience of not having to root through the site to find the item again will improve the standing of the site in the eyes of the consumer, causing them to come back the next time they're interested in buying something.
Honestly, it surprises me that online merchants are surprised with how consumers ditch their shopping cart contents so often, in light of the fact that Amazon has had "save for later" functionality for years now, a feature that was probably added when they realized that their customers didn't always place an order right away.
On a side note, I like to keep one or two paperback books in my saved cart on Amazon so that when I order a DVD that's under $25, I can add the book and get free shipping.
I don't know anyone who is a compulsive online shopper. I am sure they are out there, but most people are more hesistant. First of all with the vast wealth of knowledge everyone wants to be informed. So before I go buy that DvD player I want to rank it against other DvD players, etc. I want to find the place that will give me the best price, warranty, shipping options, etc. I want to know that my transactions are secure. I want to make sure I want it because returning it will be an insane hassle.
Just by thinking on some of these things BEFORE purchasing a product negates the "compulsive shopper" tag from a person. Usually, when I shop for something online - unless it is a replacement part for something I already own then it takes me weeks to d ecide to buy. I just ordered some bedsheets - took me two weeks to pick out what I wanted, the price and from whom. Took me almost a month to figure out the new bed that I bought - again: brand, style, vender, etc.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I've just now decided on a new rig, and Newegg's wishlist feature is pretty well handled IMHO. It took the better part of a week to tweak my final configuration and get up the nerve to drop about 2 large on it, but in the end I did and I went with NE for everything..
Not an employee or shill (or astroturpher per the recent PJG link), just a satisfied previous customer.
If merchants are paying money to be told this kind of information, then the state of retail knowledge is worse than expected.
Here are some more nuggets of cough*obvious*cough info for merchants, free.
Make your web site work with all browsers. You are in the business of selling some sort of product, not making a fashion statement
Don't block the customer from entering your site with a flash intro
Given a choice between plain+functional .vs. artsy crap, go with the former
When you do decide to update your site, make it easier, not a visual mess (I'm looking at you, NewEgg)
Don't pop up windows while I am trying to concentrate on shopping
I'm sure there are lots more. It's amazing how many shopping sites pester and distract the customer, driving them away before they can give you money!
Oh, and while I've got your attention, NewEgg, don't try to cover up your massive screwup of your website by putting a banner at the top telling me my browser, Firefox, is not "modern". I've given you thousands of dollars. I will probably give you thousands more. But it will not be for that clusterfuck of a website upgrade. It will be because your products, prices, and service.
Why?
:(
:)
Because frequently, it's the only way to find out how much something costs! A lot of sites are pretty idiotic about their placement (or not)of their prices, though that's not new or limited to web sites
A second reason is becuse you frequently have to go 90% of the way through the ordering process befiore you can find out what shipping options the company has and what they charge. That'll make or break a lot of deals.
So as long as sites purposely or ignorantly hide the details of their pricing and shipping, I'm sure there will be thousands of people like me that abandon their shopping carts for that particular reason.
I guess a lot of people might think twice when they see the total after shipping and (tax) and decide not to buy as well, It's nice to see a total before you are committed to buying
But for me it's always because of a necessary and annoying fact finding mission that I am forced to go on on a large number of sites.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
1) I am just window shopping
2) I'm trying the site out for convenience
3) I'm trying the site out on behalf of someone else, and will give them a recommendation
4) I'm using the shopping-cart to get information I can't get any other way, such as shipping costs, or to generate a total bill
For big items, I rarely buy the first time I go to an online shop.
If I've never heard of the store before, I typically won't shop there until I get comfortable with it, that includes trying out the shopping cart, reading all the terms, and searching the net for comments good or bad. Exceptions include hard to find items, I won't research the store as much for those, since it's unlikely I'll find a plethora of other stores to shop at if the store doesn't meet my normal standards.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I just realized, Amazon forces us to abandon shopping carts! They make you put the item in your cart just to see the price. How gimmiky, tacky, yeck!
Sometimes I'll abandon a shopping cart because I know someone's tracking it somewhere and I want to give them a headache.
I like Newegg. Their prices and service are top notch. I liked them a lot better, though, when I lived in Arizona and didn't have to pay sales tax. Now that I live in California, I have to pay 8.25%. One of the reasons to shop on-line is to save sales tax. Any good, reliable alternative to Newegg?
You don't have ordered your alienwared Star Wars iMac with liquid metal cooling yet !
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Ammendments appreciated.... 1. Find something you like 2. Find something that's close to something you like 3. Research both and figure out which you like better. 4. Find #1 and #2 at 2 more etailers, see who offers the lowest price. 5. Go on FatWallet or the like and see if any of those etailers have deals and read reviews on the etailers 6. Google [website name] coupon codes and see if any are avaliable. 7. Read some more reviews 8. Calculate the price with coupons and shipping/taxes for all 3 sites. 8. Buy, buy, buy -. Time to date 36+ hours 9. Wait for the UPS to come with what's left of your package.
-Palal
I bet ebay bidders ARE (more) impulsive.
If I pulled a hundred things off the shelf, but get too frustrated with the lines, I'm going to abandon the cart.
If they don't want to restock, they should have had clerks ready to help me.
Given the immediate convenience online shopping provides, there is also no sense of urgency in actually purchasing the items. It's one thing to get dressed, gas up the car/truck/tank, drive to a store after which I almost feel compelled to justify having going to all that trouble by buying something. Whereas with online stores I simply don't feel the need to buy anything on a whim since if one store sells out I'm sure another will have whatever I may be looking for. There's also the amount of time taken to price compare on-the-fly which isn't nearly as convenient in actual brick and mortar stores.
Why am I on Slashdot? I'm bored. Why am I bored? I'm on Slashdot.
shipping is another story.
:-)
:-)
You expend the 19 hours because you CAN.
Imagine walking 19 hours at the mall looking and looking, comparison shoping, trying to get the best feature set for the best price.
You'd get banned. You'd be mauled at the mall. The security guards would be on you like flies on sh*t.
So what happens?
Now that we've spent the money far more wisely, resulting in the most bang for the buck, we now are faced with the prospect of waiting for the darm thing and we just can't.
USPS Express Delievry, UPS and FedEx and making a mint because, since we've spent a much longer amount of time than we could before, we are in a big fuckin' rush to get our grubby li'l hands on whatever we actually eventually purchased. (I just bought some books, saved 50%, and I spent as much for the shipping as I 'saved' on the books. Now how smart was that?
Its like when we were kids, saving up for days/weeks/months, finally sending away for those darn Sea Monkeys and then waiting by the door for the postman (and waiting and waiting.
Now we're grown up and there's overnight delivery and its 'instant gratification' time (and as the shippers know, time is money.)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
It's quite frustrating to me to have to go through all the hoops with an online shopping cart just so I can see if they'll collect state tax from me or how much they'll charge for shipping. But usually I have to plug in a bunch of personal information just to get a final price.
So the first time I fill it with bogus data, just so I can see if I can afford it or compare with other places. So that cart gets abandoned. I then go back and get a fresh cart to actually make the purchase.
So if these bozos would let me punch in my ZIP code and give me an updated price including tax and shipping, I wouldn't have to hit the "check out" button and activate a cart.
They state that the retailers are frustrated and confused by buyers exiting out of shopping carts and then returning, but they setup the shopping cart such that you can't know the final price of the purchase without entering the shopping cart to a certain point. If you are a comparison shopper, what's the point of comparing prices if you don't have the "final" price to compare against?
I can understand that on-line sellers may get frustrated from people abandoning shopping carts, but I can think of many reasons, not just price shopping.
/rant
First of all, I think an on-line shopping cart is more analogue to simply shopping; picking something up and putting it back down. Most real stores don't have shopping carts. But if they did, and especially if it wasn't considered rude, I think you'd see much more people putting stuff in their car and abandoning their shopping cart when they left the store.
Then there's the issue of availability of other products. For example, I start of at Jameco and find most of the stuff I need, but then my luck runs out. So I go to DigiKey. They turn out to have everything. If there's a few dollars price difference I don't care, I'd rather order from one shop.
Then there's the payment method. If a site supports PayPal, then I favor them, because I don't have to provide them with my CC details. I like that. Or if none of the candidates supports PayPal, I'd look which one is more reputable. Here's a hint for on-line store owners: provide goddam address information and telephone numbers. If you are trying to hide behind the anonimity of the intarweb, then why the hell would I give you my CC number?
Now, what I get frustrated with is how little you still _can_ buy online. I have needed to order a wild variety of things lately, and as soon as you step out of the blatently obvious products, you sometimes hit a brick wall. I mean, if you don't have the infrastructure to deal with on-line sales, let someone else handle it. There's plenty of companies that are more than happy to do it for you.
I wonder if they have any idea how much business they lose by having the 'call to talk with sales' statement.
thats ok because it takes 48hrs for delivery.
If items could be delivered to the door within the hour after purchase then perhaps the impulse buy will return.
Pardon me while I vent my e-shopping peeves.
I dislike sites that force you to create an account. This implies they are going to hold on to your personal information for the long term. This should be an option. Most sites are not one I'm going to come back to. And even the ones I do, (e.g. Amazon) I've told not to cache my CC info. Sites may have the option of creating an account, but all should also have a non-account check out path. Order status can be accessed by name and order number. I'd even make e-mail addresses optional. I have frequently abandoned my shopping cart when I got to the "please create a password" screen. Especially on commodity computer parts.
Another down side of this is password security. Either you come up with a throw away password, one generated from the site name, or have to write it down or cache it. I don't quite trust the browsers password caching, especially not in Windows. No very secure solutions. Especially bad if the site is keeping your CC info on file.
Along those lines, I appreciate the sites that let you pre calculate shipping with just inputting your ZIP code.
I also like the Discover Card, one time CC number generator. It's too bad Amex dropped this feature.
First, note that this says of those who do make a purchase, almost half have gone away and come back to finish the transaction. It doesn't say that half of all people who go away will come back.
Second, they're leaving out the fact that for many sites, putting something in your shopping cart is required in order to shop. You can't check a price at many sites without using their shopping cart.
Contrary to what ScanAlert says ("Digital window-shopping is very popular among online shoppers..."), I think most people don't "window shop" in the traditional sense of taking inventory of what's out there.
A lot of the time online shoppers (Ok, I) do initial investigation, get ready to buy something, and then go check elsewhere. Since many online prices are in a similar range, it's often easier to simply complete the first transaction rather than wade through another online store.
Plus, we all have our favorite, habitual, or default online retailers.
It may be a distinction without a difference, but I think there is a sharp contrast in purchase behavior between someone hunting down a better deal (comparison shopping) and someone seeing what is out there (window shopping).
sigs, as if you care.
When I go to the store and buy something, I get immediate gratification: I saw it, I paid for it, I got it.
When I order something online, I know that I'm going to have to wait as much as two weeks for delivery. So now my purchase is followed by immediate anxiety: I saw it, I paid for it, now when is it going to get here?
Without immediate gratification, there is little incentive to impluse buy.
The real reason is this: consumers are using MSIE on Windows and the cart is abandoned when the computer crashes. Days later, when they've reinstalled the OS, they make the purchase.
:-)
Joke or flamebait, decide for yourself.
Do they have any data for how often people pick up an item in a brick & mortar store and put it in their shopping cart, only to put it back on the shelf before they finally check out? It'd be interesting to factor those stats into the equation...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
How do these numbers compare to in store purchasing habits?
Setting aside the difficulty of measuring these kinds of things, this study doesn't say anything about whether or not online purchasers are more impulsive than brick-mortar purchasers unless there's some sort of actual, quantitative comparison.
That said, anecdotally, I don't doubt that people are less impulsive online. When I go shopping in a physical store, I generally know what I want already and I've already done my research, but I'm much more tempted to buy something on display on a whim. Worse, because of the physical labor involved, I generally don't walk around the mall comparing prices. Online, on the other hand, I'll take weeks making a purchase in order to get the best deal and even though it's really easy to put other things in my basket, I don't find it to be nearly as tempting.
The exception to this is iTunes. There, I'm much more impulsive. "OOoh, 80's song I haven't heard in 20 years... (click)"
Humorless sig goes here.
One of the sellers whose site I used to visit would call me (and it should be noted that I dispise talking on the telephone) whenever I logged on, put something in the shopping cart (for two reasons: 1) to get shipping costs and 2)because it's easier then punching numbers into Calculator to get the cost of multiple components), and then logged out without making the purchase. It aggraveted me to no end. In a few cases, his prices were better than elsewhere, but I stopped shopping at his site, because of the phone calls.
Free MacMini
also let's not forget those poor people (especially geeks in in fashion shops who need to replace those ripped, worn-out jeans because their girlfriend forced them to) who feel uncomfortable in overheated, confined spaces and will grab the first thing they find just to get out...
YOU are educated stupid. YOU must seek Time Cube.
I fill my cart, tweak it, then leave.
If my cart isn't there when I come back, I don't bother refilling it. Why waste my time?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I'm never shopping Amazon.com again - it's taking almost 2 weeks to deliver a CD (IF it shows up today or tomorrow) which is rediculous. I can no longer support someone who lives in a mansion beside Bill Gates, encourages illegal alien employment - it's just not worth the patented innovation of 'one click purchase' convience anymore. Dammnit - media SHOULD be available immediately for download. Having to wait 2 weeks for a plastic disk of bits is just crazy & anachronistic.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I am terminally indecisive with most online shopping, comparing prices, similar producst, looking for reviews etc etc... EXCEPT with buying music. Music I don't want to wait for, I want it NOW!
Memes don't exist. Spread the Word.
While I agree that the normal shopper will go elsewhere to comparison shop, I feel that the majority of time that people leave a site they usually forget what they were even looking at and find soemthing else to put their attention on. Eventually, after exhausting all of the available options that could suit the purpose, they *might* come back to a certain website to select an item. I think a lot of people just simply forget what they wanted and switch their thinking to something else, which may or may not even be related to the topic they started with.
Since when is having to wait anywhere from a few days to whole weeks for shipping "instant"? Whoever said the above has either never done any online shopping or is a moron.
Nathan's blog
For me it's the shipping that keeps me from being impulsive online. I can't just buy something and have it in my hands instantly...I have to wait a few days to actually see it, and I know that during this time I'm pretty likely that the thrill could wear off, so I resist pretty easily. At the store it's completely different... being impulsive means instant gratification.
:)
Price comparison and research is definately a factor as well, but it can also be a real pain. I know there have been many times where I've spent several hours searching around just to save a couple bucks. Or I'll waste hours reading contradicting reviews. Sometimes by the time I've found the right product I just don't give a rip anymore
Mine is (sayeth he while he sits here reading and posting on Slashdot).
I've never quite understood the mindset of trying to squeeze every last penny out of an online purchase. Sure, getting a deal is usually a good thing. But come on, the back flips people go through to save a few bucks is downright silly. All of the comparisons, coupon hunting, etc, takes time. Time you can't get back and time you can't spend doing something else.
Next time you spend an hour trying to save $2 on a DVD, you really need to stop and think about what your time is worth.
-S
--- What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
I freqently dump my virtual carts or put them on hold and come back to them later. Often, I dump a cart because, surprise surprise, I have to put in my credit card info before seeing the total to be charged. Not on my watch.
I understand many places calculate shipping in the cart because of combined shipping rates, and that's fine. A bit annoying, but fine. But asking me to commit before I know what I've committed to doesn't sit well.
"I do a grep for shit, bollocks, and tits before checking in code. I'm professional..." -RECURSIVE_META_JOKE, reddit.com
Brick & Mortar implies actualy going out there.
:-)
You have a vested interest by virtue of the fact that you're going to have to come home.
And will you be coming home empty handed? Not if you were going out to buy a 'whatever'. You'll settle for a reasonable facsimile if the price point's acceptable.
That's why Wal*Mart's website is so crappy. They want you to come into the store, looking for one thing, and then they sucker you in with 'great prices' on North Korean running shoes, but acceptably high prices on anything else.
You have to get home. You'd have to get home empty handed. So you buy an IT piece of schlock and tell you self that IT must be great, after all you bought IT, and it was so cheap, well maybe IT wasn't so cheap, but how 'bout those North Korean running shoes.
Click & Order hopping on the web really means you don't even have to put your pants on to comparison shop and get the most bang for your buck (and then blowing the money you saved on delivery.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
While the reason shopping carts are abandoned so frequently has been discussed ad nauseum, a major issue remains that I think a lot of 'geeks' are missing: The time it takes an online shopper to actually purchase an item they find online.
Unfortunately, I disagree that it's primarily because of comparison shopping. The vast majority of people on the Internet today are non-geeks, (ie. average folks), and most, I dare say, don't even know many places to shop online in the first place. Geeks are great at looking around at other places for better prices online, however, to the average Joe, the Web is a very scary place. "Could this be a scam?" "What if it doesn't work when it arrives?"
That's not to say that the potential customer is walking (walking?) around terrified of every link or button. However, my guess is that they feel a lot more comfortable buying from an online store that has a real-world counterpart. WalMart, Barnes and Noble, etc. Because of this, they may even go so far as to think that it's faster to go down to the store and buy it there. Provided it's even offered there.
More often than not, it's either not available in their local store, or it's cheaper online. They muster up what little online-courage they can, and click "Order". Now that process, in and of itself, is a fairly scary one. "We will never give out your credit card number to 3rd parties." "We'll never give out any personal information to other parties." "Error: the following security certificate is from a different domain! While it's possible an unintedned audience may view your data, if you trust this website, accept the certificate." Jeeze, people. These scare me, and I've been an avid online user since DOS CompuServe. It's somewhat akin to the cashier at JCPenny saying, "I promise, sir, I won't stab you in the eyeball."
Face it, if you have trouble talking to girls because you're not well versed in flirting, average Joe is twice as terrified of this "Internet thing", running rampant with viruses, diseases, hackers, thieves, pedophiles, serial killers, and Amazon.com. I can't blame him.
Digital Sailor
We decide based on the reputation of the seller and look for the lowest price. for example, when I purchased my digital rebel last year, there was some for a really good price at Broadway Photo in New York, but they have they have a Poor rating and I walked away.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
I often go halfway through the check out process before quit, so I can see the shipping costs.
...might think I'm a cheap bastard, but I take months on important purchases. For example, I've been researching the move to a dual Opteron system for the home server. I've been researching it since January. I might purchase it sometime in June or July, but as late as Fall as well.
Personally, I think it comes down to the individual. If they are more intelligent, they are going to take longer to consider their purchases. After all, these companies have no right to my money. It's a privelege that I even consider spending my money on their crap. But other folks who are less intelligent are going to spend their money just because they want something. Even if they don't have the funds to support that purchase. These are the folks who get bad credit ratings but always have a story about how the system did it to them. Wake up jackass! The system didn't do it to you, you did it to yourself by living beyond your means. Don't fall for the televised hype about how you SHOULD be living, just buy what you honestly need and save everything else by assuming that you may not be employed tomorrow. Depression era mentalities rule. Of course, only time will tell.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I impulsively bought a laptop off of Walmart.com yesterday. It's a brand I never heard of and I took about five minutes to decide to buy it. Why? Because I checked out the return policy, and it turns out I can return it *to the store* within 15 days if I don't like it.
People are more likely to make impulse buys if they know the can return things. Returning to a purely Internet retailer is a pain in the butt, because you have to take it to UPS or FedEx and pay for shipping again. If you can return it to a local store, that's a lot easier!
Here are some examples of my recent and future online purchases. Digital SLR camera - About 80 hours over 9 months of actual researching brands/competitors/prices etc before deciding on a Canon camera and lenses. I have probably 10+ hours invested in researching another wide angle and long lens. Flashlight - still looking at Surefire/Streamlight, probably have about 20 hours over 3 weeks trying to limit down the options. Knife - Looking at a Benchmade, have narrowed it down to a few models, probably have about 10 hours over 3 weeks invested. I'm probably not the average consumer and definitely not an impulse buyer. I've been addicted to forums for reviews and buyers opinions -- buying something you are going to have for 10+ years shouldn't be done on a whim.
We are already seeing this type of behavior at places like priceline.com and LendingTree.com. As well as the numerous shopping engins already in on the web.
I think that retails thought of the web as the "Home shopping network on steriods" and are having trouble swallowing the idea of the internet as the "Global Mall."
JFMILLER
Strive to make your client happy, not necessarly give them what they ask for
Personally, if I can't determine the exact shipping cost before I give my name and address (and maybe even my credit card number), then I go elsewhere.
If the site sets an over priced shipping cost for each item and just adds the shipping costs together if multiple items are bought (greatly inflating prices from the actual shipping cost), I'm inclined to not buy from them at all, but certainly I will not be buying a lot.
Because buyers do shop, it is extremely helpful for both buyer and seller to have real time inventory information posted on the website and actually show the buyer how many of an item are available. More than once a vendor has lost a complete sale when I saw an item I wanted but waited until I could order some other items also, had put several items in my "cart", and then gone to add the item that I really wanted and that had induced me to buy from them, only to find that it was no longer in stock. Had I been able to see inventory numbers I might have known it was selling out and bought faster, instead I just dropped my entire combined order. Even worse are vendors who you can't tell if the item is in stock or not from an on-line website in this computer age.
The seller who charges actual shipping costs, or even actual shipping costs plus a buck or two for costs like the box, if far more likely to gey my business and repeat business than the seller who looks at shipping as a profit center.
Sellers who play games with shipping costs by greatly varying them for very similar size and weight items (you know who you are, Newegg) actually discourage a lot of sales. Why it costs $2.99 to ship some pcmcia cards, even $1.00 to ship some, but $5 to ship others that are on the same size box and of the same weight makes no sense at all (and even less sense if I want to buy 4 and the shipping jumps to %20).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
In the article, the president of the chocolate covered strawberry company [0]couldn't figure out why the "average waiting time for customers to return for a purchase is 15 hours"
Well doi! Like I'm going to order chocolate covered anything in mid-June and not wonder if it's going to be a puddle of goo by the time I pick it up. What he's probably seeing is people waiting to place orders so the delivery lands on a different day (or time) of the week.
I can't count the times I've dropped the shopping cart because the final shipping estimate put delivery while I was on vacation/at a conference/at work.
If I could pick "deliver it after the 17th, but before the 20th" or "next available weekend", that would be great. Especially since I don't want to pay for the privelege of getting it sooner. [1] Sometimes sooner doesn't help. Sometimes expedited shipping is a bug not a feature.
As another poster noted, Amazon recovers gracefully from that kind of thing: you don't lose your stuff. (Remember how Newegg used to have the cart on some kind of wacky timer? It's fixed now.)
R.
[0]"The report certainly piqued my curiosity as it was not what I expected," Beresford told the E-Commerce Times. "I have to dig deeper. I want more data on how many people are buying on first visit. I need to understand why they come back and why they didn't buy the first time." (president and CEO of Shari's Berries) from http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/ebiz/42761.htm l
[1]Nobody really wants to pay extra for any of this. That's why Amazon's "free shipping if you order over n$" thing works so well. And why I hate the stores that use Amazon as a reseller, since those discounts don't seem to apply.
Many manufacturers put a Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) into effect. They tell you that you cannot advertise their product below a certian point, if you do, they'll quit selling to you. Well online stores can get around that by not advertising a price, and just having you add it to your cart. After all, they have to give you a price when it's in your cart. Others have a little thing to "get a quote".
Sometimes it's just the stores being stupid, but often they have no choice.
If a site asks me to create an "account" in order to be able to buy from them, I'm likely to abandon my cart and go buy the product somewhere else. An "account" means credit. Are you offering me credit? No? Are you a bank that will pay interest on my deposits? Not one of those either? Then it's insulting to call it an account. As a cash customer I shouldn't have to enter into an ongoing relationship with you. (To use a tasteless analogy, you won't have a successful career as a whore if you're unclear on the difference between that and a girlfriend.)
The same goes for anything that isn't compatible with my browser. I might maybe be willing to turn on Javascript and cookies temporarily if you ask nicely; but if you're using broken DHTML, typesetting everything in Microsoft Flyspeck Monospace 3-Point, gratuitous Javascript that is required but isn't documented, and doesn't work when turned on anyway, etc., then you lose my business.
Also, I never ever ever want to see the IIS error message "The parameter is incorrect." on an otherwise blank page. There is no excuse for that one.
I wish abandoning my cart with an online retailer were as inconvenient for them as doing the same thing in a real store would be. Maybe we could work on that.
In the press release, Leonard advised online sellers that "consumers abandon shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers."
Placing a product in the shopping cart is the only way you can find out how much the retailer is going to charge you for shipping.
Some retailers have low product prices that they make up for with outrageously high shipping costs.
I add shipping costs into the final cost of the product to decide where I make my purchase.
Are these "frustrated and confused online retailers" frustrated and confused because online shoppers are wise to their scam?
We must be alert to the danger that public policy could become captive to a scientific-technological elite. - Eisenhower
I abandoned two shopping carts yesterday. Why? Because the losers designing the websites forced me to click all the way through to the last confirmation page before telling me the shipping costs. And one of those sites was Amazon , a site that supposedly offers free shipping if you spend more than $25. But there are so many loopholes in their offer that the only way to find out the shipping cost is to click through and then abandoning the shopping cart.
I bet 80% of the abandoned carts would never appear if the sites didn't jerk you around and force you to "check out" to check out the shipping prices.
ohmygod,thinkgeekhasplentyoffoodo kinthecorrectsectionc ompletelyok /twitch
youjusthavetolo
likerighthere,
andyou'llbe
hey,stoplookingatmelikethati'mfine!!
Video Game News, FAQs, etc
For me, the time it takes depends on the item and how well I know the seller/store. For some products (such as DVDs) I routinely order from this one place. I generally plan out ahead of time what I am going to order depending on what is on sale that month (as in by the production house, not the specific movie). However, I will browse the other items they have and toss some of that in as well.
If I get a good recomendation for a site, and it is items that are generally hard to find, I will decide to buy from that site fairly quickly. Actually ordering can take a bit longer.
The most interesting comes when I order computer equipment. I go to a variety of sites that I trust (I rarely buy from a Yahoo store for instance [I just have a problem with some of those stores, nothing against Yahoo]), and see who has the best deals for the specific parts (by specific manufacturers) I want. Will wait up to a week just to make sure I have covered everyone, then site down and order the parts.
Seems, thought, that what this guy is taking about primarily is impulse buying. Most brick and mortar stores depend on this. You go into a store, see something you hadn't planned on buying and pick it up. While that may work with something online, it doesn't work as well. With a physical store, the customer has made an effort to go to your business, and unless they get fed up (which is bad for business) they will leave and go to another. At which point they might not come back. However, as long as they keep coming back you can place items in their path to try to get them to buy things, such as the top 10 best sellers/new books at the fron of a Borders/Barnes and Noble. A slight problem when compared to online, since a customer generally doesn't go to a website to see what they have today. Usually they know what they are looking for and goto a site to buy that (and that only)
This doesn't work with websties because all they are doing is clicking. To much diving into the site, and they will leave for another site (which requires minimal effort). The realtors need to start thinking of the websites (and design) like a mail order catalog, not a brick and mortar store. Ease of use, and quick finding of items is more important to a customer than seeing what the latest sale is. The latest sale is only important for those that sign up for your weekly e-mail mass mailing.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
First - Don't tell me the price until I put the item in the cart.
Second - Don't tell me the shipping charge until you have my address, email, and credit card info.
Third - Don't send a confirmation email.
Fourth - Don't provide online tracking.
There are plenty of online retailers who provide a pleasant, safe shopping experience. I don't have the time or patience for the rest.
A shopping tip even if you plan to buy from a local store: Go to the manufacturer's site and download the owner's manual. You can tell a lot more about a product by reading the manual than you can by just looking at the item online or in a store. Of course, some things you pretty much have to see and touch in person before your final decision.
When I buy something impusively it's because I want it now. And except for the case of some newer games where I can download and purchase entirely online, this means hopping into my car, driving to the store, and wasting large sums of money. I've been far too overstimulated by the media to wait entire days for something to be shipped to me.
Doesn't surprise me in the least - I frequently think over buying things for weeks before I finally do it.
Usually I'll start off by getting an idea of how much something costs, then decide if I really want/need it and then I'll actually get round to the serious business of working out the best place to source what I want.
Only real exceptions to this are when I'm buying things that I buy frequently.
One of the reasons I like E-Buyer so much, for computer bits, is because I can save cart contents as quotes and then convert them into an order at a future date.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
In a perfect world all developers would adhere to standards, but more often than not, the retailer is in charge of how a site is presented and when they make those decisions, the site is a representation of their interpretation instead of the developers.
Be sure to remember the Programmers Prayer
I have a reserve of food. Shopping is not mandatory every day or even every week. I can afford to take out my frustrations like that.
And it takes at most 15 minutes to fill up my cart. No big loss.
i have so many stupid DVDs that came out during my freshman year.
walmart sucks
I view rebates similarly. Aside from the "we're going to hold on to your money for two months" aspect, there's the whole pressure to "lock in the rebate price" before it expires.
"Too good to be true!" Exactly.
One reason I avoid rebates. They attempt to mislead me, and they consume far more value in terms of my time than they save. And, by using them, I'm helping to feed and clothe the frustrating people who promulgate them.
"No more online impulse buying for me - except for songs from the iTunes store."
Ah, nothing like paying a lot of money for FM+ quality music.
But hey, you're only buying *that one song*, so I guess you're smart after all!
I've noticed that on all the sites that do seller ratings, fly-by-night sites you've never heard of with names like 2buycheepstuff.com almost always have 4-4.5 star ratings with hundreds if not thousands of reviews, while established brick-and-mortar retailers like Circuit City or Target usually have worse ratings and far fewer reviews. I find it very hard to believe that these no-name cheapo sites have more customers and better customer satisfaction rates than the big names. My conclusion is that the shady online-only stores are seriously astroturfing their ratings with paid testimonials, making the ratings basically useless. Does anybody out there have information relating to these sorts of practices?
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I've been doing e-commerce for years and I'll share the obvious with these clueless merchants:
/.
Most sites don't show you total price until you put the item in the cart and go to "check out". So that $140 HD looks like a good deal until "Abe's of Maine" charges $40 for shipping.
So you abandon the cart.
If the shipping showed up before you selected a product (i.e. Amazon free shipping over $25), then you cut down on abandoned carts.
But abandoned carts are meaningless. We knew that by 1999. The most important measure of your e-commerce business is retained customers.
Oops, I'm giving away too much... Can't make those big consulting dollars if I give it away from here on
Many sites keep your cart around but they require that you register with their site so they have someway of keeping track of you. They can't do it via cookies or IP because you may be on a public machine or sharing it with others so they need a way to track it on their side.
For example, Amazon and Campmor keep my carts but I had to create an account first.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Since when are online shoppers not impulsive? I bought one of these today: http://importpriser.dk/product.asp?product=3...
It's got a 44cc, 1 cylinder, 2 stroke engine and tops at around 60 km/h...
It's gonna be one hell of a fun summer!
A proud member of the Onion-in-Hand alliance
When I impulse buy, I want to have the product in my hand and out of the box once I get my card back from the cashier. Online buying means you have to wait for shipping, hence there being no instant gratification. If you know you're going to have to wait, then you might as well take the extra time to find the best deal possible.
When I am shopping at a "brick and mortar" store, and I find something I like, I always feel a pressure to buy it right away -- while I have the opportunity in front of me. Comparison shopping would take a lot of time and work. Coming back later, after I've thought about it for a while, would involve a whole new trip to town, burning more gas -- and then the item might be gone when I get there. So there's a sense of: grab it now while you have the chance.
Shopping online, the pressure is entirely gone. I can compare products and prices easily, and I can think it over as long as I want, there's no cost to doing so. So yes. . . I think it's perfectly natural to be *less* impulsive when shopping online.
Items sometimes sit in my Amazon "saved for later" list weeks or even months before I buy them. And sometimes I eventually remove them, but quite a few get bought in the end.
Keep in mind, my views may not be entirely typical since I live out in the country a ways. Online shopping has been a huge benefit to those of us who live 60+ miles from any shopping mall. (We don't worry about killing the local merchants: they all died out years ago. My town is a wasteland of fast food, convenience stores and knickknack shops.)
I second that. Their model should be made into law. Above and beyond the wish list, they advertise the FedEx shipping rate for each item while you browse and tell you whether it is in stock or not before you even add it to your cart. The only surprise is sales tax, and that's just the law (pita), not their fault. And no, I don't work for them, but a frequent, and satisfied, buyer.
sig d1337ed
The ability to compare prices and do research quickly is the big thing that stops me from impulse buying. Plus the fact that I don't feel any emotional prodding of the "Well I drove all the way out here so I might as well buy it" sort.
My usual process is this:
1. Check major sites' descriptions and prices (i.e. REI, Amazon, etc)
2. Look up product reviews via Google and review sites (Toms Hardware, etc)
3. Check similar items, if any
4. Check prices via Froogle and Pricewatch
5. Pick some sellers and check shipping costs on their sites
6. Actually buy something
Obviously this is a lot more fussing than I'd do in a brick/mortar store. I might spend weeks or months before I actually buy something.
Pricewise shipping costs are the real killer for many online purchases. When you add in the cost of shipping the savings vs. buying it in a store frequently disappear, especially for something heavy like a monitor.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
If you live in say, New York, and you order one item, maybe its shipped from Boston. Or maybe its shipped from California.
Its probably cheaper to ship over shorter distances, which would explain the discrepency.
END COMMUNICATION
(Referring to a car model)
"It is a LIMITED edition. Limited. Right, it is LIMITED to how many we can sell."
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
This story takes place on Boxing Day, in Canada, online at futureshop.ca. The flyer had already come in the daily newspaper, and it had advertised Halo for the XBox for $14.99 CDN. I was all prepared to get up early to begin my 6:30 am wait in line when I decided to check the website out.
:).
Behold! The website had the same deals available online, and applicable to their virtual stock. I quickly checked, and Halo was available; 39 copies left if my memory serves. I added it to my cart, and decided to shop for other bargains. Every other good deal was sold out by now, and FutureShop's Boxing Day policy online is to add new stock every couple of hours or so. I decided to add a few other things I was going to buy anyway when I was at the actual store, and check out.
Big mistake on my part! It seems that their shopping carts (even on regular days) have an EXPIRY feature. My cart with Halo in it disappeared and the game was out of stock for the rest of the day. I couldn't fucking believe it! I put the damn thing in my virtual cart, and it should have stayed there. I was after all, still browsing their site, and still had an open connection with their server verifiable by IP! Not to mention the SSL session we still had open..
So, I lost Halo, dumped the rest of the shit in my shopping cart, and decided to sleep in on Boxing Day. A few days later I used their website to see if by chance they had Halo actually in stock at the store, and they did! Early one morning, a week after Boxing Day, I headed down to FutureShop and poked around for Halo. Guess what? Not out on the shelves. Instead of asking one of the 'holiday helpers' I just looked through each and every single last game on their shelves until I found the last remaining copy. No doubt some fucker had hidden it with the intention of coming back for it just days earlier.
Just for laughs I remembered where the game was hiding, and asked the staff to find it for me. Their computer showed exactly one copy left in stock, so it must have been somewhere in the store, right? At this point I'm laughing inside so loud that my brain is about to explode. They searched the entire store (took them around 30 minutes) while I waited and played some crappy Nintendo DS game, and finally said "we can't find it" whilst throwing their hands up in the air in frustration.
I calmly walk over to the XBox games section, flip through a couple of titles, and produce the game with very little fanfare. I said "thank God you're just temps because that would have been a great story to tell everyone -- hey! look at me! I was just fired at FutureShop because I couldn't find a $15 game that was in the right section, just hidden behind other titles!"
I paid for my game, went on my way, and enjoyed the fact that I was probably the biggest bastard those poor sons of bitches had ever come across
Moral of the story? Online shopping carts are evil!
And the site least like Amazon for me is mwave.com, where the cart seems to be maintained in the browser and if you hit "back" you lose it piece by piece... and if you close your browser window it's gone, right then and there.
I've gotten good at recognizing when I'm starting to fall for "I'm going to miss out" thinking. The only time you should follow this is for something you truly need right then, like your tank is close to empty and you see a gas station.
The vast majority of the time the thing we are buying we truly don't have to have. It is an emotional purchase. Now I'll look at something I'm interested in and think to myself "This, or something similar or even better, is going to show up again eventually so do I really need it right now?" I'll keep on walking and the urge to buy disapears and that thing I thought I needed so badly doesn't seem so important anymore.
If you must scratch the urge to buy then filling your shopping cart online then ditching it is a great way to do it. Wish lists are good too. You feel like you shopped without spending any money. Maybe that is what a lot of those abandoned online carts are from. In a real store picking up items, carrying them around for a while then putting them back just before you leave feels the same way also.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
There is a website http://woot.com/ that is compulsive. Everynight @ 12 AM CST, they list a new item. Some sell out in 5 minutes, others don't sell out
CNet Shopper lets you type in your zipcode to get tax and shipping costs along with price listings on their comparison screens.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Exactly. Froogle shows many sites with very low prices that charge more than $50 for shipping a item weighing one pound. Companies believe they can play tricks, and no one will notice. Instead, with me at least, they ruin their name forever. I would never, for example, buy anything from ABES of Maine cameras, which charges $51.75 for ground shipping of a small camera. In Froogle, ABES looks like it has the lowest price on the camera I checked.
Common sense reasons why online shopping would inspire fewer impulsive purchases:
1. Even with a high speed connection buying anything online is a very deliberate act. You have to be determined. You have to look up a url and go through multiple screens. If you are in this frame of mind you have pretty much decided what you want ( & don't ) want to buy.
2. You have to take trouble to physically go to a brick-n-mortar store. Hence the mentality to load up while you are there. Your PC/Mac is always there so if you are unsure about a purchase you always bag it and come back later.
3. Impulse buys happen in checkout lines where you are forced to wait and stare at the impulse item they want you to buy. Not so on the web, and if they tried the customer would perceive an enforced wait or redirect as an intrusion and bag the purchase.
We abandon our shopping carts because we have no way of seeing the total, final price plus shipping until we reach the end of the checkout phase. Some sites are nice and display a running total each time you update your cart, so there are no surprises come checkout time. Most sites do not, and I can only assume they do not because they are hoping for compulsive shoppers who so deeply want what's in their shopping carts that they are willing to overlook the brutal, surprise shipping fees.
I hear ya, but oddly enough, even with newegg's shipping... the stuff still comes out cheaper very often.
I think that's because they have really low product prices, and the S&H is their profit margin. So it's actually competitive, especially if you are ordering multiples of one part, cause it says $5 to ship... and it's $5 to ship even if you are buying six of them.
I always compare several websites. mwave.com, zipzoomfly.com, buy.com, newegg.com and then run out to pricewatch.com and even google.com and see what other sites I can find. I don't always buy from newegg, but very often I do and it really surprises me at times after seeing those shipping charges.
Shopping for things online saves so much money! Jeremy Whittaker MCSE MCSA CCNA http://www.n2networksolutions.com/ Arizona Computer consulting
I am a shopper. I often spec computer parts for buddies, family etc. I go to pricewatch, and find the best prices on the most expensive component in the mixture, go to stores in the list, and build shopping carts. Whomever can come in the lowest on the total deal gets the business.
While you may save 10 bucks on a component, the cost of shipping each piece from a seperate store far outweighs this savings. The only way to do it is to go to each site and build a cart to see what it totals up to.
After a day or two of looking around, I decide, check the buyer rating on the store and purchase.
my 2 cents. I do this all the time. Since component prices fluctuate like the stock market, and stores don't, todays bargain is tomorrow's rip off. You may not get the same good deal at that store next time around, after components have jumped in performance again. Those little stores can't afford to keep up sometimes.
l8,
AC
. . . are abandoned after the shopper goes to netcraft and discovers that he's being asked to put his credit card number into an NT/IIis system? I've had flabbergasted customer support folks when I call to find about alternate payment--they tend to insist "there's no risk; this is a secure system."
I tend to pay the extra couple of bucks to buy elsewhere.
hawk
. . . those "special" shipping rates sometimes work the other way. I was looking at some batteries at NewEgg. I needed a few packs. They were going to charge me the "special" rate on each and every pack, rather than the *much* less expensive rate that would apply by weight . . . it was only special if you were only buying the batteries, and not anything else.
hawk
that used to abe a problem there, but now they sort by cost+shipping, rather than cost. However, they're not all the way there yet--they fail to eliminate those who have minimum quantities larger than 1 to get the price . . .
hawk
Three.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
I think this is why Sniping always works. If everyone bid the amount they were willing to then sniping wouldn't work at all. I have however seen my relatives and even girlfriend all bid in small increments until they have just enough to outbid the last bidder. I'm pretty sure the vast majority of ebayers do this like it's some sort of trick that only they know. I get a some mean looks from people I see doing that when I tell them they will probably lose that auction in the last 5 seconds, but it's almost always true. I believe this has something to do with the same way people reason that they have a complete game of chance (slot machines) figured out.
In Vegas && Ebay winners are usually more broke than when they started.
We have a word for those people in Las Vegas:
"Welcome."
hawk
This doesn't coun't for online music. When I download music for iTunes, many times it is impulse.
If it isn't selling, label it "limit 3."
.
Watch it go fast . .
hawk
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I know that oftentimes I see something cool in an online store and I get all very impulsive and stuff, and I say "No way I am going to wait 3 days for this gadget to arrive!" and I get out of the house and drive to Best Buy so I can have my toy today.
So I think it may be that online stores bring out the impulsive side in people better than traditional stores, but the nature of impulsiveness demands us to have something right away and therefore these sales go to local stores instead, even if you got the idea of the purchase online.
Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
H.G. Wells, "The Outline of History"
Speaking as an impulsive shopper, buying online has gone a long way to curb my shopping habits. Now I actually take time and ask myself if I really need something. I can't explain it other than to say that when I can't "have it now," buying it online doesn't feel the same. Not only have I saved money, but I actually take my time and buy exactly what I want / need, rather than just spend on something that is close to what I want for the sake of spending and taking home same day.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
One of the reasons frequently cited in this thread is that merchants have poor shopping cart systems. That is, you can't know the total including shipping untill you're 90% of the way through checkout. One example of a really nice shopping cart is at MoreBeer.com. Yah, they're not a computer site, but they do deal in Homebrew systems. They have a frame on the side which shows what's in your cart at all times and an estimate on the shipping weight. If you are a registerd user, your shopping cart will persist between sessions. Also, if you click on an item that is backordered, a javascript popup will appear informing you that the item is backordered and your order will be delayed until it comes into stock. Try that with the Amarillo hops. I just thought I would point this out as an example of a good shopping cart system.
Nice Marmot
More opinion: It looks to me likely that someone at Slashdot is taking money under the table to place ads as stories on Slashdot. The linked articles are ads for an internet security firm:
"The participating companies use security firm ScanAlert's Hacker Safe certification, a system that certifies Web sites as secure from hackers. It audits e-commerce Web sites and maintains daily remote security sweeps to make sure hackers and other Internet intrusions are locked out."
The writer of the articles is probably an employee of a public relations company. Clearly the writer has no technical knowledge. Clearly there is no issue here. People abandon their shopping carts because they have found that the company charges too much for shipping.
The articles appear to me to be written by a non-technical writer to try to take advantage of the lack of technical knowledge of most CEOs.
Regarding stock levels, many web stores don't have their own stock and instead utilize large distributors who will ship direct based on their direction. I encountered a situation a while ago where I was shopping for an item, and found that several stores all had exactly 37 in stock. The prices varied somewhat though. I was in a hurry for this particular item (needed it for a trade show), so I called several of them to verify that the item really was in stock and could be delivered when they said it could. A couple of them checked multiple "warehouses," one in Texas, one in Chicago, etc., and it turned out the only warehouse that had any at all was the one in Texas which had 37. These sellers make deals with the distributors of some kind and don't do their own stocking or shipping, at least of some items. Interestingly enough, none of them could get it to me on time for the trade show, so later I decided to buy one for future shows in advance, and found that CDW had it for WAY cheaper than anyone else so I bought it from them (I think it was probably a mistake, I now notice the price is a little higher than average so I guess I got an unusually good deal).
1) few people look that up at all (and why use Netcraft? nmap works fine.)
2) A poorly configured *nix system or application is a lot more insecure than a similar well configured Windows system. Merely being *nix does not mean `secure', and merely being `Windows' does not mean `insecure'. There's far more important variables, variables that Netcraft does not track.
3) the risk of exposure is pretty small. If I see charges on my card I didn't make, I report them to my card company, and I don't pay. The biggest problem is that I have to wait a week or so for them to send me a new card. As long as my credit card is physically in my possession, I have zero liability for fraudulent use of it. (If I lose it and report it in a reasonable amount of time, the liability limit is only $50.)
That's pretty common. People see that little lock at the bottom of the screen (the one that indicates SSL is in use) and think that means it's secure!. You know better, I know better, but most people do not.So.. why not just blow off the MAP, advertise what you want, and tell Garmin to keep their advertising subsidy? It's not like you have to print circulars or anything.
Clearly you must want Garmin's advertising bux more than you want shoppers to see your lower price.. is that really more profitable overall?
I shop by price, froogle and the rest, and I'd never even visit a shop that didn't list in the lower-end.. why bother going to everyone at MAP and adding to cart just to find out if it's real or bogus?
Lame lame lame..
I've been loosely involved with this to the point of having been asked to help with a usability evaluation to determine for a business why so many of their shopping carts were being abandoned. Actually, more specifically, they wanted to have less of them abandoned so they'd sell more. (As a disclaimer, I wasn't strongly involved, so this post is more about my own subjective views on the matter.)
I was quite surprised by this because it occured to me that many people probably weren't using the shopping carts with any intention of buying in the first place. If they wanted to actually sell more, it might be other parts of their business or website that they'd need to focus on changing.
This doesn't mean that it wouldn't be possible to make changes to the shopping cart so that less people would actually use it for things other than shopping.
I'm sure that a lot of people use it to catalogue thing that they think they might be interested in, but want to investigate further. Many online stores simply don't offer any other kind of wish-list tool for shoppers to use, thus if you don't want to forget something, it's necessary to use the shopping cart.
There's also a big issue with figuring out a total price. Often a site won't give any indication of the shipping costs until some kind of indication of wanting purchase has actually been made. Shipping is a huge issue for many international buyers -- where I am (New Zealand), buying a book online can easily end up being twice the advertised price, since shipping will often cost on the order of US$25! Especially if it's weight-based.
But really I don't understand what the problem is -- businesses should just learn to evaluate their shopping carts with different expectations. If people actually want to buy something, a reasonably designed shopping cart probably isn't going to put them off. If businesses don't want people to use the shopping carts for things other than making final purchases, they should provide more information and tools for users to use elsewhere on the website.
A huge number of eCommerce companies do at least part of their tech stuff through Ingram Micro, a huge distributor that dropships. I know that Amazon, Staples, Buy.com, Officemax.com, Dell and some other companies use them.
It's easy for me to figure out when I recive an item that it's been sent from Ingram, since the address of their PA facility is on "Micro Drive"
I have blog like everyone else
think about it:
do porn sites have shopping carts? no.
do online porn customers compare "products" before they pay? no.
do they leave the site to "think about it" and come back a week later? definitely not.
so the question is: did the guys who made the study jump to the conclusion that online shoppers don't buy impulsively because they only focused on sites that sell "physical products"? but what about digital products like software, ebooks or information services? it is possible that in this field people do buy impulsively.
It is all about access to information, the internet has it, and stores do not. What I wonder is as portable internet access takes off, will the same trends start to happen with real stores as well.
Example: See a TV sale in Best Buy jump online to find out what is going on -- look at reviews -- look at other deals -- look at newer models that the store might not have in yet.
People will look up facts IN the stores themselves just as they look them up while online shopping!
What does everyone think?
..for example.. Cougar has their outlet in the ACT. If you happen to live in the ACT delivery is _free_.
That said, Cougar doesn't have the rock bottem prices available compared to say Secret.. but they are excellent on warrenty and their shopping cart is excellent.
You can also calculate freight easily.
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The only surprise is sales tax, and that's just the law (pita), not their fault. And no, I don't work for them, but a frequent, and satisfied, buyer.
.. And I gotta wonder why more internet retail businesses don't get the heck outta high-tax states like CA, NJ, NY? If you do business in a state with no sales tax (like Alaska or New Hampshire, which don't have income taxes either, so therefore they RAWWWK) do you even need to worry about keeping track of that stuff?
No worries here, 'cuz I'm not in the same state...
You could even hire admins, developers, flash people, whatnot in different states, fly them in once a quarter and videoconference the rest of the time, and do everything but the fulfillment and handson admin remotely...
A couple weeks ago I purchased a new eyepiece for my telescope. Now, years ago, I would have gone to a local store, most likely the only one around, looked at what they had in stock, made my choice from that and then bought it at their price. Or perhaps I would order out of a magazine based on what I saw in there.
Well, in this case, I was able to research what kind of eyepiece I wanted from pretty much anything made. Once I had more or less decided what I wanted (instead of that being decided by what was in stock) I was then able to start searching around to get the best deal on whoever had that particular item. Who seemed to have a decent business record (more research), who had good shipping deals (more reasearch), who felt like they were a trustworthy business to give my credit card number to, etc...
Once I had decided what I wanted, that was the short part of the purchase. It took much longer to decide who got my business and why. And even though I've bought from that company in the past, chances are my next purchase will involve me going through the same process again.
Another factor is the credit card. I almost always pay in cash when shopping offline, but online I have to give out my credit card number.
Money is meaningless by itself, it should only ever be thought of as a tool.
In the case of auctions, money is a tool used for winning that auction. The person who best applies this "tool" comes out the winner.
In the larger view, you can also look at efficient use of money as an indicator of how well it is being used. If you are spending less at eBay than elsewhere then you have indeed "won". If you are getting something you can't even buy elsewhere, again you have "won" - so used your money as leverage to obtain something real in return (I'll just ignore MMORPG auctions for the sake of the argument).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Hey, I just won a printer at Best Buy!
:-)
Why not? It actually holds quite well for rare merchandise that is in limited quantities. The way you put it seems a little odd but not when you say something like "I scored a victory by getting the last printer before they ran out". Ok, it still sounds a little odd but not as odd...
I'm not totally wedded to the idea in all cases, but it does seem in some contexts the concept of "win" can apply to exchanging money for something else.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sounds to me like a problem in need of a software solution. What about a client side shopping cart program that kept all relevant data, including shipping costs, images, etc for products you wanted to buy. You could even have it be a pluggin for Firefox or something.
Yeah, OR, you could just keep the shopping cart info in the url and remind the user to bookmark if they want to keep their cart. Many sites do this, they just don't tell you. Look at the url when shopping and you can usually figure out if that's what they're doing.
After all, all you need to store is item # and quantity for each unique item. That's just 4 bytes. (3 bytes for item #, 1 byte for quantity)
"That's so plausible, I can't believe it!" - Leela