[thelist] e-commerce

[Fortune Elkins]

hiya!

>Surveys taken after last year's Christmas sales revealed that, on
>average, 60% of all web shopping carts were abandoned before checkout.

when i first heard this stat last year, i thought, no way. then i looked at
how often i abandoned shopping carts! i probably abandon 80% of them! i was
pretty surprised because i hadn't really looked at all the forms i was
filling out.

the main reason? to find out the shipping. in most carts you have to act as
if you want to buy and fill everything out before you can get even a vague
idea of what the shipping will be. so i'd say it's really important to give
a straight link to a general, estimated shipping for your various shipping
options. that lets the user evaluate the cost of something between 2
websites in at least a ballpark way before he/she actually presses submit.

and secondly, most sites want *waaay* more info than they need. the forms
are just too long. even if i'm willing to type all that stuff in, the pages
often time out while i'm on page 3 of 5 or whatever and i just give up. or
my husband comes in with some problem or question, and i have to go do
something else. etc. 

i'm sure everyone on this list has a similar experience!

f

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