Customers who, by all means, appear to be ready to make a purchase are often found abandoning their shopping carts before they complete their online transaction. In many cases this is part of the normal online shopping experience as the shopping cart is just used as a place to collect items of interest but which the user has no real intent to purchase. But all too often it is a failure of the shopping cart page itself that leads visitors to abandon their items which they do, in fact, wish to have.

While shopping car abandonment cannot be completely eliminated, it can be dramatically reduced. There are a number of key indicators that need to be present on your web site's shopping cart page. These indicators continue the process of instilling trust, reliability and provide shoppers the cues they need to continue forward in the purchase process.

Checkout link

In your main navigation you should always have an easy to find link to the 'cart' page where visitors can go and view all the products they have added. Typically it's a good idea to use both an icon along with a text link allowing the link to stand out a bit.

Updating cart

The actual shopping cart page should provide users the opportunity to edit their order before proceeding. Here they should have the option to remove products, change sizes or increase the quantity as needed.

Advertising & up-selling

Keep advertising on the cart pages to a bare minimum or eliminate it all together. The fewer distractions the better. Product cross-promotion and up-selling should be kept to a minimum and used only when extremely relevant. Up-sells should be used primarily at the point a product is added to the cart, not so much in the cart itself.

Safety and security

There are a number of things that can and should be added to the cart that provide shoppers with an additional sense of security. Links to privacy, security, return and refund policies all provide valuable indictors of trust to your shoppers.

Storing personal info

You should not store personal information such as credit card numbers, addresses, etc. unless specifically requested by the shopper. A simple check box option where this information is gathered is a great idea.

Shipping questions

It is extremely helpful to visitors to provide links to commonly asked questions regarding the order such as shipping options, costs and time along with what to do if there is an error with their order after they have received it.

International shipping

If you ship internationally make sure your address forms support international addresses. Even better, have the form to change to match the addressing options for each international location you allow.

Order progress

If your order form has multiple steps, provide a progress indicator so visitors know where they are and how many more steps they can expect. Similarly, it's a good idea to keep visitors informed of progress once the order is made by sending emails when items are ready to ship or are shipped, along with any tracking information. If changes must be made to the order you should give them the opportunity to modify or cancel the order entirely.

If your shoppers are truly ready to buy, the last thing you want to do is to give them an opportunity to back out because they just don't "feel right" about the purchase. A well designed shopping cart page can help ensure these shoppers feel safe and have everything they need to feel good about their decision.