Mainstream IT

If you are interested in improving the conversion rates for your shopping cart read on.

A goal funnel can be thought of similar to a funnel you might use to pour gasoline into your lawn mower. The analogy to the shopping cart is visitors enter the large end of the funnel and you hope they will exit out the other end of the funnel by making a purchase. If we record all of the visitors that enter the funnel and those that exit the funnel at the other end – we can calculate a conversion rate. Every visitor that entered the funnel but did not make a purchase can be thought of as funnel leakage. You ideally want to establish baseline measurements prior to making changes to your shopping cart.  Next, you make the changes and then observe the results.

Google Analytics provides for the creation of  goals and also provides for Funnel Visualization. The following graphic depicts a real goal funnel. The example goal funnel begins when a customer adds an item to their shopping cart, the next step in the funnel is when they depress the checkout button. The final step is the customer receiving a thank you page after a success sale.

The question of the day is – how can we reduce funnel leakage? Amazon.com is one of the worlds most successful ecommerce sites and so there is value in observing what they have done to reduce funnel leakage. Upon examination, Amazon removes virtually all other links that could distract a potential buyer as they complete the purchase process.

Mainstream IT has developed a custom module for the Lite Commerce shopping cart that removes all of the distracting links once the checkout process is initiated.

How do you reduce funnel leakage on your shopping cart?