5. Browsing takes too long.
Kill the slow-moving graphics. Keep animation plug-ins separate from the main site.
As long as shoppers use dial-up modems to access the Web, overall site speed will be a fundamental measurement to live and die by. Browse the top 10 Media Metrix sites with stopwatch in hand and you can almost feel the wind in your hair. You won't get a gratuitous 20-second splash screen on Yahoo or wait for graphic after graphic to download. The fastest sites help you get in and get out by making each subsequent click and page view as fast-loading as possible. How fast is fast enough? There is no set rule, but for a fast and free look at how your site's speed stacks up, visit Web Site Garage, a Web site maintenance service, at websitegarage.netscape.com.
What shouldn't you do? Take a look at the Web site for furniture legend Herman Miller. Compare the main site (www.hermanmiller.com) with the company's new line of lower-priced office furniture (www.hermanmillerred.com). Herman Miller is a clean and fast site, while Herman Miller Red opens with a lengthy Flash production. In addition, the actual productsâ€"small thumbnailsâ€"are upstaged by the flashy opening graphics, making downloads a chore at any speed.
Major don'ts
Requiring the shopper to install a plug-in such as an audio player before they can even access your home page is a no-no. If you have to use a plug-in like Shockwave for animation, make sure you keep that part of the site separate and clearly marked. Nothing scares away a visitor faster than a software installation message before they've even committed to the site. And nothing stops shoppers in their tracks like a missing plug-in. Always give your site viewers the option to stick to basics and stay away from what they may feel are slow-moving waters.
You have missed the most important point. Users abandon shopping trolleys - because they can! It's no problem. There's no comeback. They aren't real trolleys. No one gets hurt.
Why consider it as a problem? It's no different from window shopping. More people can do it and more will walk away because they had no real intention of buying in the first place.
You have lots of good advice about how to encourage potentiall buyers to purchase, all of it valid. But where's the problem? In a different paradigm, people will behave differently. Just because they put stuff in an internet shopping cart, ther is no implication that they ever intended to buy. Many will be just testing the system to see what happens, to try to understand how it works.
It may be that with the most perfect system, most visitors will never buy, so expending effort to improve the percentage is not cost effective.
My point is, understand the motivation of users and fix problems that really exist.