It appears that online retailers are learning some interesting things through all the user tracking garbage they’ve added to their sites.

The Internet might be turning into the ultimate window shopping experience for online shoppers. Greater sophistication with browsing is making consumers more prone to comparison shop online before actually buying.

Internet shoppers are more prone to visiting 10 or more Web sites before returning to a favored location hours or days later to make a purchase. This new trend of leaving a Web site before completing a sale suggests that Internet merchants need to rethink their marketing strategy and Web site design, says the author of an exhaustive study.

According to the report on Internet shopping habits, online merchants need to shift their focus from why shoppers abort shopping carts to why they leave Web sites without buying.

…

Online consumers are no longer rushing to click the shopping cart button on Web sites. Instead, they spend days digitally window-shopping before buying, abandoning shopping carts with an ease that frustrates and often confuses online retailers.

“The shopping cart abandonment issue is the most important thing that we uncovered,” Ken Leonard, CEO of ScanAlert, told the E-Commerce Times. “Most merchants think that shopping cart abandonment is just part of the online shopping process.”

His study showed the average time delay between a consumer’s first visit to a Web site and the first purchase was just over 19 hours. About 35 percent of all tracked shoppers took more than 12 hours to make a buy decision, while 21 percent took more than three days, with 14 percent taking more than one week to decide where to buy.

According to Leonard, the abandonment issue and the delay in completing the shopping cart purchase shows behavior that is radically different from two years ago.

This mirrors the experience I had while searching for an HT after I got my amateur technician license.  I scoured the net, looking at manufacturer websites, searching Usenet for opinions, checking reviews, and finally comparison shopping between various online retailers.  I eventually settled on a Yaesu FT-60R, although there were a lot of good radios out there.  It got to the point where I printed out spec sheets for each one and put them all on a table, then went back and forth over them for a few days.

One reason people abandon carts, though, is because retailers often require you to put the item into your cart to see the price or to compute shipping and handling.  That doesn’t bother me too much, though.  It’s the ones who don’t show you any information on taxes or shipping until after entering credit card data that don’t usually get a sale from me. 

As an example, while their site is a bit “old school*” in terms of look-and-feel, Austin Amateur Radio Supply does some good things in their cart.  Here’s an image of their cart after adding an item:

Note that it gives the shipping and handling amount and also tells you very specifically what the taxes will be if they apply to you (and they only apply to Texas residents).  It also tells you that “nothing is final” at this point.  It doesn’t require you to give up any personal information until you decide to complete the sale.  I also like the fact that it will take you back to the page you started with if you hit “Continue to Shop” (some online retailers send you back to the home page, which is bad if you were thinking of ordering some accessories that were also listed on the original item’s page).

The only thing I’d add would be an indicator about the free shipping “clip level.”  If you order over $200 from them they give free shipping.  I only discovered this when I added some accessory items to the order.

Via Slashdot.

*As for the “old school” comment above, I’ve noticed that most ham radio retailers are a bit behind the times (to be polite) when it comes to web design.