Delayed Shipping Is Driving Consumers Away From Online Shopping

It has been a recurring headline for the past few years: consumers are turning away from brick-and-mortar stores and shifting their focus to online shopping.

Although consumers’ interest in shopping in the digital realm is indeed at an all-time high, there are a few pesky things about online shopping that send consumers running back to their local malls and shopping centers.

A new report, by Bizrate Insights, a division of Connexity, found that late deliveries in 2014 still weighed heavily on the minds of shoppers in 2015.

The data, collected during the 2015 holiday season via two surveys of online buyers in the U.S. and Canada, found that 33 percent of consumers planned to shift their purchases to stores, and more than half of those surveyed planned to buy online earlier, specifically due to the prior year’s late deliveries.

Still, speed and ease, the survey found, remained major drivers of shopping online. Approximately 55 percent of respondents shopped online to avoid crowds, traffic and parking woes. And 46 percent said buying online is less time-consuming than going to stores. Free shipping was also cited as an upside to online shopping by 46 percent of respondents.

Many retailers still use special online-only promotions to keep the traffic rolling into their websites, and the survey found that more 60 percent of online shoppers took advantage of those special deals.

Further, more than 50 percent of shoppers used special online deals without actually seeking them out, while more than 33 percent of online buyers actively searched for deals.