If you want to lower your shopping cart abandonment rates, you need to analyse the usability of your shopping cart. Poor website usability, indicated by confusing and lengthy check out processes, alienates prospective customers and makes retaining existing customers all the more difficult.

Just when you are about to close the deal, shoppers in your site click away and abandon their planned purchase. If this is a common occurrence for your website, take a second look at your shopping cart design and analyze how user-friendly it is.

Average online business websites lose about 75 percent of their shoppers during the shopping cart check out stage of the transaction, according to studies. While there may be other factors that have influenced this statistical data, the fact remains that lowering the shopping cart abandonment rate plays a crucial role in the success of your e-commerce site.

You can reduce this problem by following some quick and easy usability recommendations:

1. The Fewer Steps, The Better

A basic tenet in e-commerce is to make the process of buying quick and easy for your customers. Try to make your check out method a short, one page affair. Having customers fill up too many pages of form fields with useless information will only drive them away. Think how straight forward it is to make a purchase with paypal, for example.

If this is not feasible, at least apply a logical step by step procedure for your customers to follow and eliminate the extras. Keep all the pages short. Long pages are difficult to work with, and are more prone to validation errors and inevitably lead to a system that feels like it is "nagging the user". This creates a poor user experience for your customers.

While a determined customer will purchase something from you regardless of the number of steps, a maximum of 4 steps to check out is typically what online shoppers will expect to have to complete.

2. Include Progress Indicators

Customers need to know where they are in the shopping process. This holds truer for e-commerce sites where the perception of uncertainty is higher than for bricks and mortar stores, where shoppers can see what's happening with their own eyes.

During the check out process, label each step clearly so the customers know where the are during the check out procedure. Some of them, especially those new to online shopping, want to check and double check their actions. Make it easy for them to navigate back and forth through the pages.

Progress indicators in graphic form at the top of the check out process will keep customers informed up to the end of the procedure. Customers usually complete the multi-step check out process when there are progress indicators displayed. They are a great way to increase conversion rates.

3. Include Good Quality Pictures of Products

In bricks and mortar stores, people hold the products for sale in their hands and inspect them. Shoppers can't be offered this facility by e-commerce websites. Good quality images and perhaps product demonstration videos can be offered as an alternative.

Images cause the customers to respond more quickly than text; so include graphics/pictures of your products in the shopping cart to remind your customers of the items in their basket and the reason for it.

Having product images inside the shopping cart web application also lessens going back to the previous page to verify orders. Forcing customers to constantly use the browser's back button will only confuse or irritate them.

Pictures give better product recall than names since people often remember a product's packaging more readily rather than its brand name. All these reasons for posting product pictures lower the abandonment rate for shopping carts.

4. Provide Clear Total Prices Early in the Process

Even while shoppers are still browsing, state the total estimated cost of ordering the products. Customers want to know immediately how much they will be paying for your product, including shipping and handling fees.This is a critical feature. Shoppers are getting smarter; they will feel duped if they are not informed early on of the true cost of the items and this is a quick way to kill a conversion.

Some companies attract customers with a low-ball, "fire-sale" lead price. This is effective only if you follow it up right away with the actual cost of the product to give them time to adapt to the increase. Otherwise it feels like a "scam" to your customers and breaks down the trust relationship between buyers and sellers, killing the sale.

Try applying these simple usability tips to your internet marketing strategy and make your checkout process more intuitive. You will be amazed as you watch your shopping cart abandonment rate go down in no time at all!