Cart & Checkout Abandoners from Millennials to GenZ

Generation Z are also referred to as the “Selfie Generation” “iGen” “Post-Millennials” the “App Generation”and more. While Millennials grew up in a technologically savvy and connected world, younger members of Generation Z cannot remember a world without the Internet. They grew up swiping an iPad before they learned how to talk and are the first generation to be raised in the era of smartphones. Millennials and GenZ’s are the generation who gave birth and nurtured social media, Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb etc.. If you try to understand the commonality between these services you may be able to understand the mindset of Millennials and GenZ’s.

Let’s start with a basic swipe feature in your mobile / and tablets, what does it provide ? It gives you quick way to move to next story, and cover more stories in short span of time. How it changed user behaviors? Well, now stories are short because people don’t gravitate towards longer stories.

Ever wondered why TikTok became so popular, where Youtube was already a big player and competitor? I believe it’s because of same reason ability to view short stories and ability to quickly and seamlessly jump on multiple stories. Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb ... all of these services provide short stories and ability to move to next faster.

Attention span of Millennials are short. They crave for instant gratification. They are less patient on sticking to a longer commitment / stories. They like to keep switching between apps to apps, without finishing tasks at a time. And they are mobile savvy.

Cross Device Trends

According to the research data, smartphones are fast becoming ubiquitous — with penetration of 80.6% in the US.

As you’ve probably already experienced as a marketer, the growing usage of mobile devices poses a real challenge. You have to adapt marketing solutions to the ever changing cross device environment. Below data shows a generic rate of conversion on different devices.

This data indicates that customers are more committed when they browse on computer than mobile. Research also indicates that Millennials and GenZ gravitate towards using mobile devices for their shopping needs. Millennials and GenZ are more prone to abandon cart while browsing on mobile devices, not because they don't intend to checkout but because of their behavior.

Their short attention span, craving for instant gratification and behavior of switching between apps often leads to faster abandonment of cart, where as by nature they keep coming back in multiple sessions to build their cart and checkout eventually.

As a business there is a lot of merit in focusing on this generation and bringing mobile first strategy to tackle on cart abandonment problems.

Let’s take a look even closer into the shopping habits of device hoppers and examine the differences in the browsing origin device and final conversion device used.

One of the researches shows that for most conversions, the browsing origin and conversion devices are the same. Shoppers who originally used a Computer most often preferred to finalize their purchase on the same computer (95%). However, when it comes to mobile and tablet conversion devices the proportions are much lower, meaning the device-hopping habit is more prevalent. Of the shoppers who finalized their shopping session on a smartphone, 41% began it on a different device. Likewise, 21% of shoppers who finalized their purchase on a Tablet, began their session on another device

This study also proves the effectiveness, and revenue-enhancing potential of cart abandonment emails / and shopping continuity on cross device. The study also suggests that overall conversion rate of visits from cart abandonment emails was 19.6% (almost 1 in 5 emails converted into a sale) — extremely high by any marketer’s standards.

Few top reasons for cart abandonment in general:

Lacks trust factors
Has usability problems
Selected items goes out of stock during checkout
Pickup or delivery slots are unfavorable
Checkout process is long and complicated
System requires account creation prior to checkout
Shipping charges take shoppers by surprise
Don’t have a return Policy
Payment Options are limited
Security measures are either too strict or too lax
Shopping cart is hard to find
Coupon codes don’t work
Provide no help during in the checkout process
Add unexpected costs
Checkout process is bland or unfriendly