Our online customers are important to us – too important to lose because of Web site problems.

We discovered that distracted prospects were abandoning shopping carts mid-session, costing us sales and affecting conversions.

Here’s what happened:

A business prospect would come to our site looking for something specific, add it to their basket, and then get distracted.

They’d see something else (perhaps a product we’d suggested as an add-on) that interested them and meander off course to investigate.

Sooner or later, they’d remember that they had something in the shopping basket.

Often the stuff they’d added would be gone, and they’d scream. And we’d get angry calls of complaint.

So we borrowed an idea from consumer sites like Amazon.com which make it easy for buyers to see their updated shopping carts any time.

We changed our site by adding a link to their shopping cart on the  navigation bar on the top of every page. And we added “update shopping cart” and “continue shopping” icons in other important spots on our site.

Results have been amazing. Conversions are up 30%.

(Joseph Wagner, president, www.EmployeeTimeClocks.com, St. Petersburg, FL )

Tags: conversions, links, navigation, shopping basket, Web site