To maximize your eCommerce sales, you should optimize the shopping cart process. In doing so, you minimize abandonment rates and maximize conversion rates.

To that end, here are 5 quick tips to get you on your way to better shopping cart results:

1. Keep It Simple – use clean, simple layout

2. Remove Unnecessary Fields – the more fields, the more likely the shopper is to abandon the cart

3. Do Not Require Registration – why add a level of commitment that simply isn’t there for many prospective shoppers?

4. Label Buttons Clearly – make it stupidly simple for someone to understand what each button option is for

5. Include Images – studies have shown that adding product images to the shopping cart increases conversion rates

6. Clarify the Process Steps – how many steps are there in the process, and where is the shopper at in the process?

7. Minimize Steps – provide single page checkout if possible, or at the very least simplify the checkout process with as few steps as possible

8. Provide Contextual Answers – unanswered questions lead to doubt, which leads to abandonment

9. Demonstrate Trust – include a link to your privacy policy, show trustmarks such as VeriSign, McAfee, BBB, etc.

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Tags: conversion enhancement, conversion rate, online retail, retail, shopping cart

This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 7:13 am and is filed under eCommerce, small business websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.