Do you get lots of Spam Email - I do. It's annoying to the point of me actually finding phone numbers, then ringing up these people and telling them (very bluntly) to remove my email from their database. Anyway, I digress, I had a Spam that had a couple of interesting nuggets of information:

1. 75% of all e-shopping carts are abandoned before the purchase is actually complete?
2. Nine out of 10 shoppers who abandoned their carts did so because of a lack of customer service.
(Web Merchant, Fall 2003, Cybershopper Survey)

3. 72% of respondents said that customer service is critical in shopping satisfaction.
4. Less then one percent of all ecommerce Websites offer live customer assistance.
(eMarketer, June 2002)

Even though these nuggets are quite old (certainly in Internet terms), they are still very valid. As a shop owner, what have you done to track where people are leaving your site?

A few years back, I spent a few days watching one of my clients osCommerce store - it soon appeared that a very large % would abandon their cart at the "log in" page. I changed some code around and reduced this by over 50%…

The main problem with almost all osCommerce installations, is that the customer must create an account before he sees the full cost of his order! How dumb is that? Of course, this is because osC needs the customers address before it can give a shipping quote - but how many Store Owners have realised that this is a major turn-off for buyers?

What can be done about it? There are a couple of contributions which can help quite a bit, 1 is "ship in cart". Another idea would be to give an estimated cost of postage, based on the weight (or number) of products in the shoppers cart. Anything is better than nothing.

Have a think about how you can streamline your osCommerce Store - it could result in more sales being made, which is always a good thing!