With more online shopping options available to customers than ever before, any added friction on your platform could potentially cost your business revenue. Forter surveyed 2,000 Americans and found that every year, most of us back out of 96 online purchases halfway through. Most shoppers will even start to experience second thoughts about buying items in our cart after just 22 seconds. This is equivalent to $2,500 a year per shopper – meaning merchants have a lot to lose. Striking the right balance between amply protecting their online businesses from fraud or abuse while simultaneously preserving an excellent customer experience, is growing increasingly vital to online merchants.
“Instant gratification is the new expected customer norm. Brands with online platforms that delay that need will see higher rates of cart abandonment and customer drop off,” says Forter CEO and Co-Founder Michael Reitblat. “Merchants need technology that empowers them to identify and stop fraudsters while ensuring legitimate customers receive the shopping experience they expect. In today’s competitive e-commerce landscape, managing risk while delivering the most frictionless customer experience is imperative.”
The survey reveals that it doesn’t take much to cause shoppers to feel frustrated enough to abandon their carts. Half of Americans agree that the thing most likely to prompt them to abandon their purchase is having to re-enter their credit card information. Similarly, re-entering shipping information (44%) or having to re-login (42%) also causes shoppers to reconsider whether they’d like to continue on in their journey to checkout. Buyers also tend to bail out of their purchases if they have to complete more than just 3 steps in their transaction.
Ultimately, “merchants need to balance the risk of fraud with the expectation of speed and convenience,” Reitblat says. In such a growing and competitive digital market, the most successful merchants will be the ones that are able to find a fraud prevention partner that is able to offer a comprehensive enterprise-grade platform that assesses trust at every point of interaction, in real time, without impacting the customer experience.
Check out our infographic below to uncover more highlights from our recent survey.
