According to a recent study by McAfee, 65% of online shoppers who abandon their carts during the check-out process, soon return to complete the transaction, with the largest number of these shoppers returning to buy after one to two days. This study, titled ‘Digital Window Shopping: The Long Journey to Buy’, surveyed 150 million online transactions and found that delays in purchase are far more common than previously imagined. According to this study, the following are primary reasons why some consumers delay purchases after placing merchandise in online shopping carts:

• Brand recognition: Merchants with higher brand recognition enjoy shorter purchase delays than lesser-known brands, in part because of the comfort level of the consumer.
• Demographics/experience: More experienced online shoppers – who are usually but not always younger – are more comfortable with the e-commerce experience – from checkout procedure knowledge to security savviness, and will click “buy” more quickly than a shopper new to e-tailing.
• Competitors: Merchants who sell in a highly competitive marketplace will wait longer to see a sale as consumers shop for similar product by price and convenience. Merchants offering unique or hard-to-find items will experience quicker purchase decisions.
• Novelty: New services or products, especially if they are perceived as too expensive for an impulse purchase, will take longer to close a deal on.
• Price: Higher priced items or high purchase value orders will tend to take longer to complete as shoppers reconsider whether they can really afford them, especially during the recession

This study also found security concerns to play a significant role in whether a shopper abandons their cart, and/or if the customer returns to complete a transaction. This was revealed though monitoring the behavior of two groups of consumers: one group that saw the McAfee trust-mark on sites, and one group that saw sites without the mark. Shoppers which saw the mark were converted to buyers at a rate 11% higher than those which did not. Interestingly, shoppers that waited four or more days to complete a transaction were even more responsive to the mark, which suggests that the more uncertain a consumer might be about making a purchase because of security concerns, the more likely they are to delay. A similar study by Paypal and comScore found that 21% of buyers security concerns’ played a major role in their online purchasing.

via MarketingCharts