Consumer Behavior

Challenging product search top reason consumers bounce off e-commerce sites

Photo by istock.com

September 30, 2021

Nearly three-quarters of U.S. and U.K. consumers cite difficulty in finding a wanted product as the prime reason they abandon an e-commerce site and more than one third (37.1%) report that product recommendations are rarely tailored to them.

Those are top findings from a Qubit survey of 1,500 consumers when it comes to online shopping experiences, according to a press release.

"Consumers are increasingly relying on e-commerce for their shopping needs and are doing so in greater volumes and with more resolve than ever before," Tracey Ryan O'Connor, chief revenue officer at Qubit, said in the release. "The shift towards online shopping, which experienced unprecedented growth due to the pandemic, is showing signs of longevity. This underscores the urgency for brands to improve the online shopping experience that they're delivering based on customer feedback and industry best practices."

Additional results include:

• Poor navigation was selected by 61.1% of shoppers as a top reason for bouncing or abandoning a site. Furthermore, 6.3% of consumers reported looking for products page by page — a surprisingly high figure for this inefficient manner of product discovery. This is noteworthy because brands typically have only a couple of page views to grab and maintain a shopper's attention.
• While 34.5% of U.S. and U.K. shoppers (41.5% for U.S. respondents only) said they expect recommended products to be tailored to them specifically while shopping online, 37.1% said that product recommendations are rarely tailored to them.
• Mobile shopping appears to be more popular with U.S. respondents than in the U.K., with 40.7% of U.S. consumers reporting their preference to shop by smartphone versus 30.4% in the U.K. Mobile e-commerce will only continue to grow globally in the coming years as social media and mobile devices make not only browsing, but also buying via mobile, effortless.