Too much choice and a lack of advice when shopping online is causing high-intent shoppers to abandon purchases, new research reveals

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: Too much choice and a lack of advice when shopping online is causing high-intent shoppers to abandon purchases, new research reveals.

Too much choice and not enough product information online is causing high-intent consumers to abandon purchases, right at the moment they are ready to buy, a new report from iAdvize, the leading conversational commerce provider, warns.

Original research of 2,000 UK consumers in the Reach out and I’ll be there: Why do brands abandon high-intent customers at the point of purchase? Report from iAdvize showed that 83% of shoppers that abandoned a purchase did so because they felt there was simply too much choice online and felt overwhelmed by the amount of options available.

When abandoning a basket online, 58% of UK shoppers felt there wasn’t enough product information available to help them decide on their purchase, with a further 55% saying fears around making the right decision was also a cause of cart abandonment.

Over half (52) of UK consumers said better advice and product information would make them spend more with a retailer, while a further 56% would spend more frequently with a brand, demonstrating the importance of supporting the shopper with the right type of advice, delivered in the most appropriate channel at each stage of the buying journey.

Stuart Gordon, UK Country Manager at iAdvize, commented: “The key to building customer trust and confidence is to develop conversations that deliver the high-quality information that shoppers need, when they need it most. To achieve this, brands and retailers need to adopt a unified and integrated approach to customer engagement.”

Over half (53%) of shoppers polled in the report said they wanted retailers to serve them the most appropriate type of advice that mapped to their query – whether that was chatbots for quick-fire questions or access to customer service advisors or independent product experts for more complex, in-depth queries. 

A fifth (21%) said having customer service assistants available to provide information via livechat was the mechanism that gave them the most information and confidence to buy a product online – higher than the option to speak to a customer service advisor on the phone (17%).

Stuart Gordon continued: “Consumers want to use the best solution available to address their questions, switching between channels as their buying journey progresses. Retailers and brands who offer their customers a full suite of integrated engagement solutions, from chatbots to human interaction, will be able to prevent high-intent customers slipping through their fingers at the last moment,” he concluded.

* Research of 2,000 UK consumers who shop online, conducted by OnePoll on behalf of iAdvize, 08 – 11 April  2019.