I got an email the other day:
Hello Emma, I came across your web site and was curious to understand your view on shopping cart abandonment and what is being done to address this.
I thought it was an interesting question. Here’s my reply: Well, shopping cart abandonment is a real problem – but the solutions depend on the cause of the problem. Typical issues relate to users simply saving items to find later, or using the checkout to find shipping costs, but other factors such as a too-long registration form, complicated password requirements, a lack of a progress indicator, etc. etc. all build a picture not conducive to the customer contentedly completing the transaction. When I’m analysing a checkout, I look at webstats data or if n/a then a representative set of server log files (day/week/month depending on the size of the site) to analyse every page in the checkout process to see where the drop off is in the checkout page – e.g is a particular page causing problems, or is is constant throught the checkout – and what can be done to combat any problems. I also look at the site from a usability perspective, and assess security and billing arrangements. All of these elements will be a factor in dropout.
You will always have some abandonment, but you can take steps to minimize it.