Shopping cart abandonment has now become a common scenario in e-businesses worldwide. Imagine filling up your shopping cart at a locals store with your favorite things and just abandoning it due to some reason. Not good for you and even worst for the store owner if this goes on and on.  It might a rare scene happens too often: a visitor adds products to the shopping cart in your online store but then leaves your site without completing the checkout process. In ecommerce circles, this peculiar phenomenon is referred to as shopping cart abandonment.

The biggest mistake that an e-entrepreneur makes is asking customers for quick registration before even using the shopping cart features. This leads to shopping cart abandonment as many feel reluctant to share personal information and register for a new account before they can even use the shopping cart.  A common complaint among web shoppers is the irritation and invasion of privacy before going through the features and deciding whether to use it or not.

Often excessive, confusing and high shipping rates compel many to abandon their cart and quit a possible checkout process. Charging excessive shipping rates and not mentioning it anywhere is not wise. As early as possible in the ordering process, the client should be made aware of all added costs. Shipping costs and taxes are added fee and keeping it hidden and charging at the last minute is just bad business. This can only have shopping cart abandonment as the end result.

Long checkout processes can make customers exhausted and they can just leave it incomplete and head on towards a different website. Information should be requested in as few steps as possible to successfully complete the order process as possible to avoid cart abandonment.

Payment gateway solutions should be offered in abundance that will allow customers to pay with an option more suitable to their needs. Letting your customers know which payment options are available up-front improves conversion rates and reduces shopping cart abandonment.

The above mentioned factors make e-commerce unsuccessful but by provide assistance to confused customers through live chat software can be the possible remedy. A live chat feature on your cart pages may encourage clients who are confused to ask for assistance, thus helping you to close more sales. The operator immediately sees where the new visitor came from, what search terms he used, how long he has been on the site, and what pages he has seen on the site and can help at times during the checkout process, informing about hidden costs if any and assisting in successful completion without having to abandon the shopping cart.