Shopping cart abandonment is of primary concern to online retailers, and for good reason. If real-world stores were like their virtual equivalents, there’d be so many shopping carts littering the aisles the shoppers would have to literally climb over them!

The best kind of ecommerce site is one where the shopping experience is smooth and easy – slippery in fact. Whether you whip out your credit card or not is a foregone conclusion – you are swept away in the moment. The epitomy of this is Amazon’s “1-click ordering”. If I stumble upon a product I like on Amazon, I can own it within a single click of the mouse.

Here are some tips to make the shopping experience a slippery one, which will hopefully equate to less abandoned shopping carts in your virtual checkout aisle:

1. Eliminate steps in the checkout process where it makes sense. Just remember that fewer is not always better; it depends on whether the checkout pages remain uncluttered and uncomplicated after consolidating steps.
2. Let shoppers know where they are in the process with a progress indicator on each checkout page.
3. Let shoppers see what they have selected already with thumbnail images inside the shopping cart.
4. Allow shoppers to edit their selections easily. Revising color and size options of items in their cart should be painless.
5. Show them you are real. Assure shoppers by providing your full contact details including physical address. I as a shopper don’t trust sites that are completely “virtual” — i.e. no physical address, no company info, no photos of staff — and I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment.
6. Recommend other items based on what is already in the shopping cart (i.e. cross sell and upsell).
7. If you are competing on price, offer a price guarantee.
8. If, after all that, the customer abandons the shopping cart, find out why. Offer them an incentive to complete an exit survey. It will reveal a lot about the shopping experience you are providing your customers.