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Last week, Brendan tackled how to answer the 5 unanswered questions customers face in the shopping cart (other than shipping costs). According to a recent study by PayPal and comScore, 45% of US online shoppers had abandoned shopping carts multiple times in just three weeks.

What are FUDDs? We're not talking about wabbit-hunters or the beer of choice in Shelbyville. FUDDs are fears, uncertainties, doubts and deal breakers that influence consumers' purchase decisions. How you address them can have a huge impact on your conversion rates. PayPal and ComScore recently conducted a study on shopping cart abandonment and discovered customers' top reasons were

So, it wasn't exactly Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood ("I've abandoned my CAAARRRRRRT!!!"), but when Jeffrey told me today that he still hadn't bought his nephew the Fisher Price Grow to Pro Basketball hoop after two weeks of putting it off, I assumed he was being dramatic. Jeffrey claimed to be sticker shocked from shipping cost inflation, a common reaction while shopping online. One minute, you think you know the whole price. Then - bam - you proceed to checkout, only to find that the price has shot up as much as 25%. Was Jeff being cheap? Probably. But it's understandable. The truth is that online shopping has spoiled us. When Amazon ships for free - at least it feels that way if you buy into Amazon Prime - and when Zappos wants you to return those shoes (yes, really), anything less feels like a cheap plastic substitute for the real thing. ToysRUs.com does so many things right. The product image views are clear and show multiple angles. The customer reviews are helpful and thoroughly integrated. I could go on, but the important thing - the reason they still haven't sold Jeffrey a Fisher Price Grow to Pro Basketball hoop - is that they set a poor expectation of total cost before checkout.

Picking up where we left off in the Marketing Experiments Conversion Sequence C = 4m + 3v + 2(i-f) -2a, the last couple posts covered "m" for Motivation discussing optimizing your ecommerce sites for "hunters" on home pages and search and navigation. Today I want to look at motivation from a different angle. I want you to choose a landing page that is top priority for you to optimize. For example, your most profitable product with the highest abandonment rate. I want to get you thinking about which customer motivations are most likely to match your business, your products, your typical customer and your landing page presentation.

Plenty of studies suggest customers want demand free shipping: * 61% online shoppers prefer to shop with a retailer that offers free shipping than one that doesn't. - Forrester Research (2007) * 43% of shoppers abandon their shopping carts because of unexpectedly high shipping charges. - PayPal, comScore (2008) * 60% claim free shipping is a reason they are more likely to shop online. - Harris Interactive (2008) * 90% believe free shipping offers would entice them to spend more online. - The Conference Board (2008)

BoldChat recently released research on The Effectiveness of Live Chat Technology which surveyed 264 US shoppers who consider themselves regular online shoppers.