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Improving Your Shopping Cart System

8 January 2011 No Comment

No matter how profitable your eCommerce website is, there is always room for improvement. You should constantly search for new ways to make your website more user friendly and a big part of this is related to the shopping cart. This software will turn your visitors into buyers and you have to make sure that those who decide to place something in their shopping cart can checkout easily without any kind of problems.

Basic Functionality Improvements

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After you install a shopping cart system, there are a few little tweaks that need to be made. You should take a look at what the software has to offer and see if your online store is truly functional. Your buyers should be able to modify the quantity of the product directly from the cart, instead of having to click on the “add to cart” button over and over again. A link that goes to the product page should be placed below each item and it should open the page somewhere in the background. Another important thing is the total price, so find out if this information is available and clearly visible.

Increasing Sales through Your Shopping Cart

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Increasing sales is quite easy if you know how to add a few important details next to your shopping cart. A good strategy is to add links to similar items; this will keep your customers interested and they will eventually find a product that they didn’t intent to purchase in the first place.

Once they reach the checkout page, many people won’t like their long list of items and they will be surprised by the total price. Their analytical side of the brain will kick in and they will try to get right of the products which have unfamiliar names. A good way to stop this from happening is adding thumbnails next to the name of each product. If you can see exactly what you’re buying, you won’t feel the need to take it out of the shopping cart.

As a final method of increasing sales, you can add a “free shipping if you order x more products” button. This way, some people will prefer to save on the costs of shipping and they will add a few extra items.

Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment

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The number one reason for shopping cart abandonment is a high shipping price. This is exactly why the total costs should be displayed on the same page as the products. This will reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate drastically. Another strategy is to keep the process as simple as possible. This way, even those who are not interested in registering for your website will still be able to place their orders rapidly and effectively.

If you manage to get the email address of your potential buyers before they abandon their shopping cart, you might want to send them an email with a special discount coupon for their order. This will help you gain a few customers if you make the right offer.

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