Online retailers need to be more up front about their shipping costs to encourage customers to consummate a sale, according to a PayPal survey.
About 56% of shoppers intending to buy an item online said they abandoned a purchase because of higher than expected shipping charges that they discovered after proceeding to the checkout. This is despite the fact that they had previously bought from the site.
Many online shoppers click the checkout button to get information about shipping costs, cross-border duties and other handling fees that's not provided by the online merchant earlier in the sales process. "To reduce cart abandonment, merchants should provide this information sooner in the checkout process," said Darrell MacMullin, PayPal Canada's country manager.
Sales might also be cancelled because Canadians are still unsure about buying online. More than half (51%) said they felt some anxiety about buying online; 40% said they were not overly confident that the merchant they were buying from could keep their financial information secure.
Smaller and lesser-known merchants face more hurdles online; 66% of respondents said they were reluctant to buy from stores they had never heard of because they didn't want to share their financial information.
Using a widely known e-commerce provider may help alleviate some of the concern.