Study Finds Merchants Lose Sales Due to Online Checkout Frictions

Study Finds Merchants Lose Sales Due to Online Checkout Frictions

The PYMNTS.com and BlueSnap Checkout Conversion Index benchmarks how well online merchants convert shoppers to buyers

Twenty years after the launch of the commercial Internet, most merchants still fail to optimize the online checkout experience for the customers who visit their virtual storefronts. The result is that they stand to lose as much as 36 percent of sales due to the frictions that remain from discovery through checkout. This is only one piece of the online buying experience. Merchants could lose additional sales during payment processing.

These are the findings of the new Checkout Conversion Index (CCI), launched today by PYMNTS.com, in collaboration with BlueSnap, a leading provider of global, mobile checkout solutions. The PYMNTS.com Checkout Conversion Index is a quarterly report that benchmarks the performance of 650 merchants across 14 merchant categories against 46 attributes that define the optimal online shopping and checkout experience. The Index provides insight into what’s causing checkout conversion issues, as well as what merchants can do to overcome them.The first CCI Index score is a 62, which means that in terms of converting shoppers to buyers, the average eCommerce site is performing only slightly better than average.

“That’s not exactly great news for online retailers,” said Karen Webster, CEO of PYMNTS.com. “With online sales possibly hitting $105 billion this holiday season, this means that merchants are missing out on making nearly $38 billion more.”

Some of the interesting results The Checkout Conversion Index found include:

• The best sites deliver results in a speedy 134 seconds – just over two minutes.
• Size doesn’t matter: the average Index ranking between small and large companies was relatively similar.
• 93% of the best sites provide trusted security logos when checking out to let their customers know that they care about their financial data and will safeguard it.
• The Automotive Parts & Accessories industry came in with the highest score of 91.

“We work with merchants daily and see this problem, firsthand,” remarks BlueSnap CEO Ralph Dangelmaier. “Worse yet, many merchants don’t even know that they have a problem – or the magnitude of it. That’s why we wanted to do something to shine a light on the problem so that we can raise awareness and, more importantly, help merchants overcome it.”