As the owner of a few online shopping sites, it gives me perverse pleasure knowing the confusion I’m causing for countless online shopping sites when I abandon my cart on the checkout page.

With 50% to 80% of online shopping carts being abandoned on checkout, I was surprised to see that no list of ‘common reasons for cart abandonment’ (eg. here, here and here) included the buyer having second thoughts about the purchase, or perhaps their fear of buyer’s remorse.

Not one mentioned this as a possible reason.

In my case, it’s more to do with retail therapy without the pain of actually paying. Let me explain…

You see, in a real-life situation, it’s one thing to ‘window shop’, but you can’t take your thrills further than that. You can’t get a basket or trolley, fill it up to the brim, take it to the till and then decide not to pay and walk away without the goods. But online you can!

Very often when I need a pick-me-up, I go to Takealot and put together a whole order of goodies. Then, when I get to the checkout, I see the total is way too much to even consider and I ‘abandon’ my cart. And I tell you what – because you don’t get the goods immediately when you shop online anyway, the thrill is all the same!

I do feel bad that Takealot personnel are left scratching their head wondering what the reason was, but the thrill far outweighs the guilt.

That said, the window shopping thrill is being threatened somewhat by the likes of PayJustNow, whose plugin allows online shoppers to split their purchases over three months, interest-free. So now you can, like, actually buy things.

Like if you’re looking to buy natural Malawi Cane furniture from my site, malawicane.com, any purchase for R2 500 or less can be split over three months.

Here’s a cool example:

This stunning black traditional Malawi Cane chair with brass feet would usually cost R2 403 all in (with paint, fumigation and brass feet), but now you can pay R801 a month over three months. What a pleasure dealing in hundreds, rather than thousands!

PayJustNow is signing up online retailers fast. You can check out the list of online retailers with PayJustNow here.

Enjoy shopping for those little treats you keep abandoning at checkout 😉