Mobile shoppers more likely to abandon online carts

Tuesday, September 1, 2015 - 19:00 by Paul Tissington

In yet more evidence that retailers need to up their game when it comes to safe shopping online on mobile devices, a survey from Harris Interactive has shown that 55 per cent of people have given up on an m-commerce purchase because the user experience was not up to scratch.

Analysts believe that this issue could be costing retailers up to £6 billion each year, although the reality is that some of this money is probably redistributed elsewhere within the industry, if British consumers come up against a sub-par shopping site on their smartphone or tablet.

Thirty two per cent of respondents said that once they had decided to stop in the middle of an m-commerce transaction, they did not then resume the purchasing process elsewhere at a later date.

Those questioned were also asked if there were any other mobile services that they had stopped using because they did not operate in a satisfactory manner, with a quarter saying that they had encountered experience-ruining dilemmas when trying to access banking services from a portable platform.

There is little excuse for retailers failing to meet expectations when it comes to providing safe shopping online via smartphones. The entire market has moved towards mobiles, with more than half of all website visits now being generated from portable devices in the UK.

Better still than offering adequate mobile sites and apps is the idea that retailers need to keep the user experience consistent across all platforms. This will mean that if people do start their shopping journey from a smartphone, they will find it easy to save their basket and then complete a purchase later on a desktop PC, rather than deciding to abandon it altogether, which costs the retailer a sale and sours the relationship with a potential customer.