3 ways to optimize Your Shopping Cart and Instantly Boost your Sales figures

Most of the Internet entrepreneurs know that ease of use of a website helps to grow your sales and encourage visitors coming back. Just make sure to create and maintain an easy-to-navigate website complete with sitemap, a clear descriptions of products/services, and purposeful images (charts, photos, diagrams, etc.) and you will always turn a profit – or will you?

However, the one page that’s often neglected by online marketers and business owners is the shopping cart/order page. The challenge is, that if this page is to confusing or if it’s too difficult to complete the check out process potential customers will quickly leave, even if they had every intention of making a purchase. We thought we’d share with you a few key ways to improve the check out process, leading to an increase in conversion rates (in this case: sales).

Keep the process Simple and Clear

Keep your order pages simple and clear – a list of products/services and prices along with key information such as shipping costs are what customers look for before submitting an order. The order page should be the first page customers see when they click on check out. The next two pages can display things like billing and shipping information (it’s also a good practice to allow customers to create an account to store this information for repeat ordering). The fourth page ideally includes a summary, billing information, and estimated date of delivery that customers can review before submitting their order. Finally, a confirmation page should follow that includes customer service information so people know who to contact if they have any questions about their order.

Many customers get annoyed if they are forced to click through a series of pages that contain ads, up sells, disclaimers, etc so be very careful about including those unless proper testing shows it’s beneficial. If you need to add extra information about things like shipping and returns we recommend creating a separate page and linking it to your confirmation page. This way people can find it if needed but not every visitor get’s exposed to it.

Displaying Shipping Options

You may expect people to drop out of their purchase if they see that they need to pay for shipping etc. However hiding or making it difficult for people to view your shipping rates will not translate into many sales. Most people fully understand they will have to pay some type of shipping and handling fee (unless you specify otherwise) and want to get details the amount beforehand. You can create a window that opens up to display shipping rates and options and allow customers to choose the option that best suits their needs.

Marketing and Other Information

As mentioned, even though up selling or offering special deals can lead to increased revenue, most customers don’t want to be sold an upgrade during checkout. If you offer upgrades to the product they are purchasing you could mention these options in your product descriptions. Alternaitvely, you can create a specific page with the upgrade information that includes a ‘Proceed to Check Out’ button. You could do the same when promoting new products and services, to bring these under the attention of your visitors.

Abandoned Shopping Carts

Even thought you would expect a visitor to complete a purchase once they reach the shopping cart, it has been estimated that a whopping 65% of shopping carts are still abandoned. There are plenty of reasons for this to happen and some can be related to technical challenges, the bottom line is that each abandoned cart means losing out on a potential sale – money you’ll probably never see. It’s a “No” in the whole chain of “yes’es” you have been creating throughout your website. A key learning is that “it’s not over until it’s over. You need a complete chain of “Yes’es” for the same to go ahead. So make the shopping cart an important part of a customer’s overall shopping experience to lower the percentage of abandoned shopping carts as much as possible.