Cart Statistics - How To?

how many people actually abandon the cart?

[mifi601]

I have noticed a lot (how many?!) of people go through the whole 'booking' process and never finish paying.

my questions:

does anyone know of industry (travel) wide stats of abandonment?

which tactics do you use to make your own stats? I use paypal and all I know is there is a significant difference between the amount of people that click through to paypal and the amount that actually books.

which leads me to my third question:

is there a public statistic of abandonment for various online cc processors? some sort of comparison chart? Now THAT would be interesting ...

[otnot]

Hi:
I loose 7 out of 8 people that get to check out. I'm still trying to figure out how to increase my conversion rate.

[danieljean]

In a lot of industries, cart abandonment rates aren't very high anymore. "E-Commerce User Experience" (Nielsen et al.) doesn't make a big deal of carts, and indicates that it is the area where small and large sites have the closest usability scores.

If 7 out of 8 people abandonned carts in my industry, I would start to panic. But travel? I often add a ticket to a cart to figure out the real cost, and compare from different vendors. Checkout procedures in that sector however tend to be rather daunting.

Paypal could also be a factor. Are you filling in all the values for users? Are you taking advantage of the new rules that don't require customers to sign up for an account?

PS: I could take a look at both your sites and see if I find anything unusual. Sticky me details.

[mifi601]

I develop simple online booking solutions for small hotels and inns. There is no 'daunting' checkout.

I do not however prepropagate paypal. I figure if one is already a member, I minimize unnessecary filling out of forms and also keep privacy at a maximum.

I will sticky you a couple of URLs - would love to get your opinion!

Michael