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How to Increase Online Store Sales by Minimizing Shopping Cart Abandonment

A great percentage of online shoppers
abandon a shopping cart before completing the checkout process. Industry research reports as much as
75% of shoppers abandon the shopping cart before purchasing. Learn tips on what you need from your
shopping cart software so as to reduce this significant statistic, and increase your conversion rate.
A Checkout Funnel with a Small Number of Steps
Your shopping cart software should support a conversion friendly checkout process. The main purpose of most
shopping carts is to generate sales, therefore you would assume that the lesser number of clicks a user has to
perform to purchase a product, the less likely they are to abandon the process.
Industry research reports that shopping cart software supporting a 2 to 3 step checkout process is
ideal.
Place Shipping Types Before the Checkout Process
Before customers add their product to the shopping cart, many want to know if they can get their product
before a particular date, or the next day. Therefore, you should think about presenting shipping types on your
product pages, before the customer adds their product to the shopping cart.
Place Shipping Costs Early in the Checkout Process
When customising your shopping cart and checkout process you should place shipping prices early on in the
checkout process, and if possible on your product pages.
You want to build up a trustworthy relationship with your potential customers especially throughout the
vulnerable checkout process; therefore you should customize you shopping cart and checkout process so as to
present them with the total cost of their product. Nobody wants to be billed at the last minute for shipping
costs, when throughout the shopping cart process they have been under the assumption that the total cost has
been presented to them.
Show Stock Availability
The best shopping cart software enables you to present users with stock availability before the user places
their product in the shopping cart. By giving your user this information before they get to the checkout
process, it saves disappointing your customer later in the checkout process once you have gained their trust
and they have made the decision to buy.
Make the Next Step Obvious
When customizing your shopping cart it is important that you lead your customer through a seamless shopping
and checkout process. Otherwise, confusion will almost certainly lead to shopping cart abandonment. Provide a
prominent "Continue with Checkout" button and keep the appearance of the checkout sparse and easy to
follow.
Make Editing the Shopping Cart Easy
When designing your shopping cart you should customize your shopping basket to allow users to edit their
products easily. If it comes in different colors and different sizes don't make them delete it from their
shopping cart if they want it in a different variation.
Build Confidence and Trust
When customizing your shopping cart you should aim to consistently show them that you're a real entity.
Throughout the entire shopping cart and checkout process your guarantee, return, privacy, delivery, customer
service and security policies should always be in visible view. Even better, you should present the relevant
information at the most relevant time. For example, as a user has to enter their email address during the
checkout process, you might reassure them at this point by having your privacy policy alongside the field.
Viart Shop offer scalable and flexible ecommerce shopping cart solutions. To evaluate the Viart shop, the
free evaluation edition is a fully functional version of the Viart shopping cart that can be downloaded from the website at:
http://www.viart.com/Free_Evaluation. Viart also offer
hosting, web design and reseller packages.