Consumers are expanding the time they spend in digital window shopping

The easy availability of digital window shopping is stretching the time between looking and buying online, according to a new report, “Digital window shopping: The long delay before buying,” from online security services provider ScanAlert. The average delay between when shoppers first visit an e-commerce site and when they make a purchase is now, at 34 hours and 19 minutes, 80%, or more than half a day, longer than the 19 hours and 11 minutes ScanAlert reported in 2005.

“The primary reasons for the increase over 2005 are greater sourcing choices and the availability of broadband access at work and in the home,” says Nigel Ravenhill, ScanAlert’s director of marketing communications. Ravenhill says those trends present a paradox for retailers in that faster Internet access allows shoppers to complete purchases more quickly but also makes it easier for them to jump from site to site. “Combine that with the increasing popularity of shopping search engines and you have the ideal environment for increased digital window shopping,” he adds.

ScanAlert found that delays over the past two years increased for all time periods studied. In 2007, 57% of shoppers delayed buying after shopping online by more than an hour, a 14% increase from the 50% who reported doing do in the 2005 survey. 30% of shoppers delayed their purchase by more than a day, a 7% increase from the 28% who did so in 2005.

The biggest gains in delay were among shoppers who already were taking a long time to purchase, a group ScanAlert labels “cautious shoppers.” In 2007, 26% of shoppers surveyed took three or more days to buy, up 23% from the 21% who reported doing so in 2005. 18% took more than a week to buy, up from the 14% who delayed purchasing by more than a week in 2005; and 6% delayed purchasing by more than two weeks in 2007, up 50% from the 4% who reported doing so in 2005.

ScanAlert found that consumers who spend the longest time shopping are also the ones most concerned about the security of their personal and financial information when shopping online. That means they are most influenced by merchants who provide them with those assurances, according to the report. Based on the findings, ScanAlert recommends that online retailers reevaluate their pay-per-click advertising campaigns, given that a longer time between looking and buying means it takes a longer time to accurately determine ROI.

The report underscores that shopping cart abandonment is an habitual part of digital window shopping for many consumers prior to making a purchase, and a fact of life for online retailers.

“It’s vital to understand that revenue from immediate or impulse purchases is typically balanced by transactions from latent shoppers,” Ravenhill says, adding that retailers need to focus less on shopping cart abandonment and more of the issue of site abandonment. Specifically, “Organizations with transactional sites need to make the online experience more informative and the sense of safety more memorable, in order to influence those who abandon their carts to return later when ready to buy,” he says.

The data is from 480 A/B split tests run on 470 web sites, representing more than 2.6 million individual sales transactions recorded between May 2005 and May 2007, as generated by approximately 128 million site visitors, according to ScanAlert.