Study: Online shoppers taking more time to hit 'buy' button

Online consumers have become relatively slow shoppers, according to a recent report on digital window shopping.

Online shoppers are now being more cautious than they were two years ago, and are taking more than half a day longer before making a buying decision and completing a transaction, according to a report by ScanAlert, a security-certification company in Bay Area that analyzed 2.6 million online sales executed on 470 Web sites from May 2005 to May 2007.

Since May 2005, the average time between a consumer's first visit to a Web site and an actual purchase increased from 19 to 34 hours, according to the report. One fourth of the shoppers took more than three days to decide what to buy, and one fifth took more than a week.

In discussing reasons for the increased time it takes consumers to make a purchase, the study cited their increased interest in comparison-shopping and their concerns about the security of online transactions.