ShopSite Shopping Cart --> Checkout Usability Assessed?

[lbohen]

Our cart abandonment stats show that once a visitor puts an item into their shopping cart that most sales are lost on that page vs. those who proceed to checkout and finalize their purchase.

Although ShopSite users have the ability to design their carts, I am curious if the developers of ShopSite apply usability principles to the generic cart design.

Also, I would appreciate feedback on what changes others have made to the ShopSite generic cart that have reduced cart abandonment.

[Jeff]

I presume you're getting your stats from Lexiconn's Cart Abandonment Module, correct? It shows that about 2/3 of our carts are abandoned at some point. Only about 1-3% are lost in the check out phase. Some of our lost carts surely occur because we don't export. A few customers put things in a cart and then phone in their order, which we welcome.

High abandonment is a fact of life unless you're giving products away.

If the rate is abnormally high, make sure your shipping rates and shipping area are clear without having to put products in cart. We tried lowering prices on a few products with high abandonment rates and that didn't appear to help.

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We use many devices to reduce abandonment at checkout.
- Geotrust certificate
- 800 phone number in two places
- In business "Since 1933"
- Key policies stated including "Liberal return policy"
- Removing excess clutter. We dont display "show me my cart every time I order something" which I feel is confusing.
- Statement that we don't share customer info
- We show a picture of a store location and welcome customer to "visit us" in person sometime.

We make it darn clear to the customer that he doesn't have to register in order to buy from us.

I've looked at nearly 100 SS cart pages over the years and learned from some of the best custom template carts. I've studied the checkout process at major commerce sites such as Wal-Mart.com and Amazon. Have all these devices helped reduce abandonment? Not much!

[WizardBlack]

I know I have dropped more than a few orders myself. I found the prices and info to be great; the website to be trustworthy, etc. However, when I got to the checkout and saw how much shipping they were going to charge me I changed my mind. Try looking at your shipping schedules to make sure there are not a few combinations of products or zip codes that are yielding some out of line costs. Try moving some of the shipping cost to the product price as well. Advertise free shipping, etc. You'd be surprised how much more profound a few bucks can be in the shipping cost to the customer's decision. It does, of course, depend on what kind of products you are selling and their price range, etc.
HTH,
Donovan

[Jeff]

Is anyone else using Lexiconn's Cart Abandonment Module ?

What sort of abandonment figures are you seeing?