We’re in the home straight of the holiday season with the finishing line in sight.

For online retailers – it’s your last chance to boost your 2008 revenue, and so it’s vital that your e-commerce website is performing at its best.

With just over 2 weeks of shopping madness left, here are some quick to implement vital last minute tips to ensure your e-commerce site is making the most out of the 2008 sales rush.

1. Always look to maximize your customer’s order value. If you’ve got them into the cart – they’re positioned to buy. It’s the perfect time to cross-sell.

2. Send customers directly to the cart after they add items. It reduced potential distractions from the sale and will get them into buying mode quicker.

3. If you offer voucher/coupon codes, ensure customers can find where to use them easily in your cart. It will help customers to see the discounts immediately and entice a quicker sale.

4. Keep the checkout process simple. Less clicks to sale = much higher conversions. So remove unnecessary steps, questions, fields etc.

5. Build trust. People are always hesitant when spending online, so it’s important to instil confidence in the cart with assurances, guarantees, and security/privacy details.

6. Remove cart distractions. The only links available in the cart should be point customers towards confirming the sale, other than those that build confidence/trust (e.g. link to privacy and security policies).

7. Capitalize on cart abandonment. At this time of year, you’ll see cart abandonment increase, but if your site is gathering contact details during the order process – make sure to contact anyone who leaves without making a purchase. Special offers or incentives might be enough to get them converting.

Now there’s plenty more cart optimization tactics…but if you ensure you’re at least following the above – you’re giving yourself a strong chance of ending 2008 with solid sales.

If you have anymore cart optimization tactics to share with your fellow readers – leave them via our comments below.

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