Online retailers roll out holiday promotions this week to combat high shopping cart abandonment rates.

Two thirds of online retailers are rolling out holiday promotions this week or have already done so. 61% of holiday promotions this year will be focused around free shipping, and 29% on promotional discounts. Multi-buy and free product offers will account for only 10%.

These are the main findings from a SeeWhy online poll, conducted on October 26th, among 255 ecommerce marketers on their promotional activity in the run up to the holiday season.

When do you plan to roll out your holiday special offers?

At SeeWhy, we continually track abandonment and conversion trends. In 2009, we saw a strong trend of customers stalling purchases in anticipation of holiday offers. From Labor Day through November 15, the number of online sales fell by almost 56 percent compared with the volume for the previous month, and the shopping cart abandonment rate shot up, peaking at 83 percent.

Once holiday promotional offers were rolled out, the transaction volumes rose sharply, and the abandonment rate fell dramatically. This year so far, we’ve seen shopping cart abandonment since Labor Day averaging 79%, which is higher than the same period last year (71%), though it appears to be trending back to more seasonal norms.

With the majority of online retailers rolling out holiday offers this week, we can expect the shopping cart abandonment rate to fall sharply, as it did last year, as customers begin to take advantage of free shipping offers, which have for long been a customer favorite.

The top reasons people abandon shopping carts according to a Forrester Research study can be grouped into two main reasons; price (including the cost of shipping) and the fact that they were not ready to buy. Ecommerce marketers are trying to address the first main issue in a number of ways. Two thirds plan to minimize abandonment due to shipping costs by either offering free shipping to customers who satisfy a minimum order purchase (which is the most popular tactic with 43% of respondents) and a further 18% have calculated that they can offer free shipping on all orders.  Tying in with these findings, Shop.org’s eHoliday Study conducted by BIGresearch, found that 36.7% of retailers had an increased budget, compared to last year, for free shipping.

The second most popular strategy (with 29% of respondents selecting this) is to offer percentage discount offers. Two other tactics, which were less popular, are to offer free product (6%) and multi-buy discounts (4%).

What will be your primary holiday promotion tactic?

A notable difference this year compared to last is that many retailers have offered more discounts throughout the year rather than purely during the conventional sales periods so it will be interesting to see how this impacts on the peaks and troughs of seasonal buying. We at tracking this with interest at SeeWhy and will keep you informed of the trends as they happen.