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One of the most important elements of your ecommerce Web site is the checkout page. This is the first page from the cart, basket or bag (or whatever you call it on your site) after you offer the option to "check out."

It looks like Google might be getting serious about its payment product, Google Checkout. First, right around Thanksgiving, they replaced ...

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.

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

Here are 5 key, unanswered questions (beyond shipping costs) of the shopping cart: 1. Do you offer alternate forms of payment (aside from credit card)? 2. Are you safe and secure? 3. Why are you asking for this information? 4. Do I have to set up an account to buy? 5. Do I get to review my order before we transact?