Cart Abandonment - Losing the Sale!

[Rooftop]

...If I have to register to buy then I must have to really, really want the item from that shop and that shop only to proceed. Otherwise I click off as it is an annoying waste of my time.

If it doesn't display shipping before I register then I do not buy, it actually annoys me, it is terrible customer service. I think if they are that ignorant of my needs at this stage of the sale the last thing I want to do is proceed further.

The registration issue seems to generally be a case of presentation for most stores. Afterall, there is little you can buy without providing the information and the key difference between guest checkout and registered checkout is really just a password.  We simply won't use the R word though - it has a measurable negative effect on most sites we have tested.  less so on tech sites.

Shipping before checkout though : I can't believe people still don't do this.  It's a biggy.  We don't usually offer a quantifiable money back guarantee on optimisation type work, but I have done it before where people have required registration before shipping calculations.  We were just so confident that fixing that would have a big positive on the conversions that it was a no-brainer (although the price was still adjusted accordingly).

Argument against it seems to be: "I need to know where the customer is to ship to them".  That is a genuine issue for a lot of stores, particularly where the customer base is widespread.  However you can usually get a big step of the way using informed guess, generalisation and offering some options. Even "UK Shipping, £8. Click to change location" or something is simple and will bring that abandonment down.

[jetboy]

Thanks Paul. Ordered.