Shopping cart abandonment has long been a poke in the eye for online retailers. There's nothing more frustrating than to have a customer load up a shopping cart full of goods, only to see him or her disappear when it comes time to pay up.

The reasons for shopping cart abandonment are many: poor page design, unsecured transaction pages, slow server response, required registration and multi-stage checkout process being the most common. Merchants and e-commerce hosting providers have been wise to do their best to at least eliminate the latter two reasons. Yahoo unveiled its new checkout system in August 2005 and now Volusion has done the same.

Volusion announced recently announced its new One-Page Checkout that eliminates both buyer registration and multi-step purchasing.

"Eliminating the need for multiple steps and required registration, Volusion's new One-Page Checkout will dramatically increase the number of completed purchases," the company said in a statement. Volusion cites studies that found about half of all prospective customers abandon shopping carts sometime between selecting products and clicking the buy button.

"The fewer steps there are between a customer and a purchase, the better chance for a merchant's success. The new additions to Volusion's existing solution will not only increase user-friendliness, they will also work to significantly reduce cart abandonment rates," said Volusion.

Besides the new One-Page Checkout, Volusion said it now offers users a "guest" checkout option. With this option, customers are no longer required to create an account while making a purchase. The company says an account can still be made, which in some instances may provide the customer with more user benefits. However, if a user prefers to remain anonymous, Volusion's new checkout makes this preference possible. The company claims merchants will see an increased number of orders since fewer shoppers will abandon their cart for privacy reasons.

Merchants are so concerned about shopping cart abandonment ECommerce-Guide has published several articles on how to address the problem, including our recent series on site design: Checkout Pages. You can also read 20 Steps to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment — Part I and Part II.

The new checkout options are now available to all Volusion customers.

Devin Comiskey is the Managing Editor of ECommerce-Guide.com.

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