Abandoned shopping carts
I heard my friend Alan Stevens talking about abandoned shopping carts recently, and had a mental image of a Tesco's cart on its side under a hedge somewhere. However, Alan wasn't referring to the escapees from the local supermarkets littering the countryside - he was talking in much larger numbers.

There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned shopping carts littering cyberspace. Yes, I'm talking about all those half finished purchases where people have become impatient at yet another click and another screen to fill in and given up in disgust. I'd put money on the fact that you've been there yourself - and somewhere you started the process to buy something you'd found online and given up and hit exit around about the 4th screen on the way through your purchase process.

PayPal have got it cracked - sign up once and then you can easily buy without filling anything much in providing the site has the PayPal facility available. However, lots of the bigger online retailers don't offer PayPal, so you have a credit/debit card payment process. That's great if it's name, card number and address - but when they start asking for delivery addresses, verification of invoicing address, what my maiden name was (if I have one), whether I'm single or not, what other products I'd be interested in (at this point - no way), and a multitude of other questions I don't want to and don't have time to answer.

There's not much I want so badly that I am prepared to sit still and fill in endless screens. In fact, if I'm trying to do a quick purchase in a coffee break then it's not only going to stop me, but will probably frustrate me so much that I will tell the next person I speak to of my frustration - and maybe a few others after that too!

If your website sells products and you take payment online - make sure your payment process is as simple as possible - and don't add to the number of abandoned shopping carts littering the world wide web!