Understanding why people abandon online shopping carts is the first step toward improving your online retail website and shopping cart system. By knowing why people abandon online shopping carts and what you can do to avoid these situations, you will be able to increase your sales and repeat customers. While shopping cart abandonment will happen from time to time, there are some things that you can do to increase sales and stop shopping cart abandonment.

The number one reason that people abandon their online shopping cart is that they don’t want to pay shipping costs. You can avoid this situation by keeping your shipping costs reasonable, and disclosing shipping costs before the customer reaches the check out system. By displaying the shipping cost with the items before reaching the shopping cart, customers can make their decision in advance.

Another reason that people abandon their online shopping cart is that the total price is higher than they expected. You can also avoid this situation by including more information within the cart and on the product description. Allow the shopping cart to display total cost with tax and shipping included so that customers know when they have reached their budget.

Including this information with the product description will also give customers more information when comparison shopping. If the customers do not need to place items in the shopping cart to get the information that they want, they will not be filling a shopping cart and leaving it behind, taking up space on your servers. Additionally, by making the information easier to find than other websites, you will likely gain a customer.

The number one reason that people abandon shopping carts is that the check out process is too complicated. Your check out process shouldn’t be more than three simple steps: gathering shipping information, gathering payment information, and order confirmation. If your check out system is too complicated, or if it is too hard to alter the contents of the online shopping cart, you will lose many customers.

In the end, putting a stop to shopping cart abandonment on your online retail website will not only make your business more money, but save your business money as well. By implementing a few user friendly shopping cart features, you can gain more customers, make more sales, and save money and/or space on servers that is no longer taken up by filled online shopping carts going no where.