hi, Jonathan, how are you?

I've read a lot of reports & studies on this over the years & the average figures that are given tend to be around the 50-70% range. There are many different ways to track abandonment (eg. factor in sales over a period, segment out 'never bought before' vs 'existing customers', etc)

Reducing Abandonment

To be honest, the most important thing is to benchmark your own abandonment KPIs & reduce those. Every vertical & every site has its own intricacies. If you're looking to reduce that, here are some great resources

http://www.omstrategy.com/45/why-website-abandonment-matters-how-to-fix-it
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624370
Call To Action - A fantastic book on improving online conversion

Google Checkout

I've heard from people who've used Google Checkout that it has improved conversion rate. The '£10 off' bonus they're running at the moment may be driving this, but there are some core reasons why it should improve conversion in the future if it takes off well enough:

1. no signup barriers, no need to fill in address details each time
2. no need to remember passwords for sites you haven't used before
3. simple, familiar checkout process every time
4. no worries about credit card fraud
5. no worries about privacy / rogue email marketers

With no signup costs, no credit card process charges at the moment, & the "£10 off when you spend over £30" incentive, I cannot see many reasons not to implement a Google Checkout test.

I hope all of that helps!

daniel

Daniel

Many thanks for all your help, it has been really useful and something that I will need to work upon asap.

Jonathan

On 13:04:34 10 May 2007 danielb wrote:

hi, Jonathan, how are you?

I've read a lot of reports & studies on this over the years & the average figures that are given tend to be around the 50-70% range. There are many different ways to track abandonment (eg. factor in sales over a period, segment out 'never bought before' vs 'existing customers', etc)

Reducing Abandonment

To be honest, the most important thing is to benchmark your own abandonment KPIs & reduce those. Every vertical & every site has its own intricacies. If you're looking to reduce that, here are some great resources

http://www.omstrategy.com/45/why-website-abandonment-matters-how-to-fix-it
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3624370
Call To Action - A fantastic book on improving online conversion

Google Checkout

I've heard from people who've used Google Checkout that it has improved conversion rate. The '£10 off' bonus they're running at the moment may be driving this, but there are some core reasons why it should improve conversion in the future if it takes off well enough:

1. no signup barriers, no need to fill in address details each time
2. no need to remember passwords for sites you haven't used before
3. simple, familiar checkout process every time
4. no worries about credit card fraud
5. no worries about privacy / rogue email marketers

With no signup costs, no credit card process charges at the moment, & the "£10 off when you spend over £30" incentive, I cannot see many reasons not to implement a Google Checkout test.

I hope all of that helps!

daniel