I want to talk seriously about the Zen Cart checkout.

A frequent request I get from my clients is for a one page checkout as if it was the holy grail.  Everyone seems to be under the impression that having several steps to the checkout reduces sales.

I want to seriously – and loudly – say NO! There’s very little wrong with the Zen Cart checkout.

First off, if you have customers signing up and not finishing a sale, there is a mod for you to start investigating what your customers see as obstacles to buying form you.  It’s called Recover Cart Sales and is located in the contributions section (http://www.zen-cart.com/index.php?main_page=product_contrib_info&products_id=100)

That mod will allow you to see abandoned carts so you can contact the customer to find out why they quit in the middle of a sale.  What you find out may surprise you.

I just recently watched a webinar by James Arrendondo of Exclusive Concepts (exclusiveconcepts.com) about cart abandonment.  You can watch it yourself if you want at http://www.exclusiveconcepts.com/OnDemandWebinarLimited/ondemandworkshop-video.html.

I had a chance to speak with James after the webinar to find out more about what he does and who his clients are.  He only works with the big dogs, folks, sites that amass 50,000 visitors plus per month.  So I suspect he knows what he is talking about and guess what?  He agrees with what I’ve been saying all along.

Here are the facts from a Forrester Research study:

70% of shoppers have abandoned their carts at least once

57% of shoppers don’t want to pay high shipping costs

48% of shoppers did not realize the full cost of purchase until reaching the cart

41% use the cart for research

15% find the shopping cart process too complicated

The reason why this resonates with me so strongly is the 41% number – using the cart for research.  Personally, I do a lot more research than buying online so I knew that there were more like me out there.

So what can you do to improve your Zen Cart performance?

First and foremost is to answer your customers’ questions up front.  So continue reading for James’ questions and my Zen Cart and general ecommerce answers…