Reducing Shopping Cart Abandonment

"The biggest reason for people to abandon shopping carts is shipping costs... Merchants need to reduce shipping costs as much as possible," said Massimo Arrigoni, CEO and Co-founder of Early Impact, which develops ecommerce software for small businesses. Its ProductCart line of shopping cart software is used by thousands of Internet stores around the world.

"What merchants need to do is to try to make at least one shipping option free, for example for orders over $50, UPS ground shipping is free. Or provide customers with an electronic coupon. If they're using a really basic ecommerce application it may not have features that allow them to do it."

The second cause of shopping cart abandonment is, "forcing a customer into registering an account," said Arrigoni. "Even if the difference between entering your shipping information is that one field, which is requesting a password," it can make or break the transaction, he said. "Make the password optional, maybe after the transaction." He noted that Early Impact's ProductCart line does offer online shoppers this option.