How to Minimize your shopping cart abandonment rate

Web analytics industry research works towards minimizing the shopping cart abandonment. The online shoppers abandon the checkout process by up to 75% according to a survey by Bizrate and the NPD group. This means that Majority of online consumers starts the purchasing process, but leave before completing their purchase.
A large number of factors influence this statistic including shorter the checkout process which appears to be the obvious solution for most companies but from the experience we have learned that other factors are at least as important. So here are a few tips from the professional web analyzers at Stepmiles search engine marketing firm to help you improving your shopping cart abandonment rate.

• Let the shopper know that the area is secure. This is a crucial issue especially while from the industry research we know that most American search online but prefer to buy offline because they don't want to type their credit card number online, scared of identity thefts and other security related issues.
• When you sell products, add a picture into the basket. Your visitors like to visualize what they buy - They want to be sure that nothing went wrong in the checkout process and that they order the product they want.
• The shipping cost should be provided as soon a possible in the online checkout process or may be another reason for shopping cart abandonment. Your visitors want to know what is the total cost of their order and the sooner they get it the more confident their will be going towards a new sale.
• Provide a link back to the description of the product. Just don't leave your customers having doubts or moving away from the shopping cart. If they want to check the product description let them do it.
• Provide them with a an information about your company, give them your mailing address or your phone number soon in the process. Not that they will call you right away but they want to be sure that their money is going to a real company, not a fake website located overseas.
• Return policies, assurances and testimonials should be as well easily accessible to your prospects.
• Make the navigation of your website easy. The internet user has a merciless weapon, its mouse, if the next step of the checkout process is not obviously one click away you are taking another big risk of shopping cart abandonment.

Each website is unique, those tips provide what works best to minimize shopping cart abandonment but result may vary depending on your industry and product or services. Please consult our web analytics consultants to know more about the best practices to improve your conversion rates.