Dive Brief:

• In a recent consumer study by Splitit, 87% of online shoppers said they would abandon their shopping carts during checkout if the process was too difficult. And on top of that, 55% admitted they would abandon their carts and never return to the retailer's site.

• In a press release, the payment solution company wrote that older shoppers were even more likely to abandon a tough checkout process. Specifically, 90% of shoppers over 55 would not follow through with a purchase and 7% would never return to the site after a lengthy checkout process. Ads are another checkout annoyance, with 28% of consumers over 45 saying they would abandon their cart if they felt there were too many ads.

• Overall, digital cart abandonment is currently as high as 70%. Gil Don, CEO and co-founder of Splitit, noted in the release that, "Online merchants must be sure to include clear and easy ways to enter customer details, choose delivery options and make payments, while ensuring that the process does not become cumbersome for the shopper."

Dive Insight:

As e-commerce continues to rise, the market is expected to reach $4.88 trillion by 2021. But sales to individual merchants are by no means guaranteed, and the onus is on retailers to make checkout as easy and fast as possible given that an abandoned cart could mean the permanent loss of a consumer.

According to a recent study by Usabilla, the No. 1 reason for shopping cart abandonment — cited by 58% of consumers — is high shipping costs. Another 8% cited longer-than-desired delivery times as reasons to abort. In an era of Amazon Prime's free two-day delivery, other retailers are under pressure to match with free delivery or include other incentives at checkout to continue to compete with the marketplace giant.

Among those incentives, exclusive deals, special shopping days and reward points are a key way that retailers draw and ultimately retain long-term consumers. Big names such as Kohl's, Macy's, Target and DSW beefed-up rewards for their loyalty members in 2018 and some even now offer options that don't require membership or store credit cards.

However, a relationship that can take many transactions to build can be easily erased by just one bad experience. A study by Optimizely, reported in Biz Rate, states that 35% of all shoppers can be turned off of a brand from just a single bad user experience. And 39% of consumers in the same study said that a bad online experience would affect their likelihood of purchasing from the brand in a physical store moving forward.