Wokingham, Berkshire United Kingdom (PressExposure) April 17, 2010 -- The latest tracking tools let you see exactly where traffic is going, where it is coming from and what people are doing on your website. Using these tools and by being open to changes on your site you can try various tactics of pushing incoming users straight to the product pages (designed of course to allow for a direct purchase route) or give them a chance to meander through sections of the site designed to aid customer research and then direct them through to the purchasing funnel.
However, because of the way web privacy works it is almost impossible to track particular traffic to particular people, which means that what looks like negative results may not in fact be as bad as you think.
Many eCommerce Webmasters have huge issues with the drop-out rate at the checkout. It is quite common for analytics to show a ratio of well over 30% (depending on business and traffic volume) of people leaving the checkout without completing the purchase. There are lots of reasons for this but one of the major reasons is that many customers perform what has been termed "Digital Window Shopping" by Mcafee. The good news is that most return within 2 days to complete the purchase. Analytics of course cannot tell that they are the same customers returning as their IP addresses do not match with their previous visit as most personal connections have dynamically assigned IPs.
For Webmasters with ecommerce websites that require users to login to the site before completing a purchase it is a great time (and heartache) saver to create a report that details all the users logged in to the checkout page who didn't complete a purchase, in this way you can see who is simply exhibiting the window shopping trait and did come back later to complete the purchase. In this way the drop out at the shopping cart stage can be corrected and at which point most webmasters can simply breathe a sigh of relief, safe in the knowledge that their checkout drop-out rate is actually far more reasonable.
Better yet because you are logging details of those who dropped out of the purchasing system, you have an opportunity to contact them (assuming their privacy settings allow for customer services contact) and find out why they did not complete the transaction, giving you more feedback with which to improve your store, your service and your profits!
Advansys produce modularised ecommerce websites that are scalable to meet your needs. We also perform bespoke website development so if you find that you need some custom work, such as the report detailed above or other analytics and testing enhancements then we are always able to add them into your project to make your site the best in your market.