Web Site Shopping Carts

Insiders' tips for website shopping cart

It doesn't take much for a customer to terminate their order on your website shopping cart, so be sure to follow these guidelines below:

1) don't try and make a profit on shipping costs. if the customer going through the checkout has a nasty surprise when they get to shipping fees, it can lose a sale. See what your competitors are offering and try to undercut them.

2) provide answers to questions easily: imagine you are a customer wanting to buy your product. have you told them everything they need to know? A Frequently Asked Questions page is a useful start, as is the ability to offer a live help (from one of your sales team) to any customer that has questions about your product or your site.

3) promise realistic customer support by email or phone, and stick to your quoted response time (and, indeed, product delivery time): nothing frustrates a customer more than feeling like he or she is ignored.

4) allow the customer to chose multiple products, change their mind and drop a product easily, without losing sight of where they are in the shopping process (be sure to maintain a visible shopping cart summary at all times). Remember: your site must be clear and concise, even if your customers' decisions are not.

5) reassure your customers of your integrity early on: assure them that your site is secure, inform them of your warranty and refund policy, and be honest about your shipping prices and turnaround times. If you use UPS, you can integrate your site with theirs so that customers can track their orders easily.

6) Do you research. Gather data about your market from any source you can - usually from official data, or from your customers themselves. Find out what you can do to add value and benefits to your product and where you can expand your brochure. Most importantly of all, keep a close eye on your competitors and keep up to date with their own promotional activities.

You can learn more about your customer's behaviour by looking at your web server logs at any given time: they will tell you how many hits your site received, where your customers came from, which pages that looked at inside your site and what links they used. Is it worth ditching or redesigning your less popular pages?