Iam setting up a simple ecommerce site to sell about a dozen online services. I already have a merchant Account. Now I am looking for a shopping cart or template with a shopping cart that has been optimized for maximum Conversions.

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

I think the conversion rate depends mostly on what you sell, who are your visitors and where they come from, design of your store, pre-sales support etc. Most of shopping carts have the same look-n-feel and checkout. For good conversion rate it's better to have one-page checkout (lower shopping cart abandonment rates).

Or are you looking for search engine optimizing your website pages ?

Most of the visitors to your store come from organic search engines you can look for a search engine friendly shopping cart solution like GoECart.com to give an additional boost to your business. They also have a peer division, specializing in search engine optimization, which is common among shopping cart providers.

He's not talking about search engine optimisation, he' refering to conversion optimisation, i.e. the ratio of visitors who end up making a purchase. Optimising involves improving the checkout process, improving copy, improving usability, careful use of 'calls to action', psychological techniques etc. A lot of this stuff is down to the site owner to apply to their site, so you need to look for software that allows you the freedom to incorporate all these techniques.

I don't know of any software that has an optimised checkout process, they all seem to be drawn out, multi-stage affairs. Hence, I tend to hack the software to get what I want.

You hit it dead on.

I'm looking for shopping cart software that has been thoroughly tested to optimize customer purchase conversion. I want the highest percentage possible of visitors who buy!

It does not sound like there is much out there. I would think that this would be an enormous opportunity for someone who is good at studying conversion testing.

Unfortunately, that ain't me.

From my research on shopping cart I haven't seen to many off the shelf carts with a optimized checkout. Which I think is kind of silly becuase that is the whole purpose, isn't it! The good thing is most carts allow you the flexiblity to customize the checkout.

Does anyone have any good examples of checkout process that works? That someone could model their cart after?

Unfortunately it seems a lot of people who create ecommerce software know a lot about coding and databases but not much about matters such as conversion rates which is why most cart software has excessively drawn out checkout procedures (amongst other things). Hacking is the way forward - and reading books like 'Call to Action'.

I might be missing something here, BUt if a customer *wants*a thing, he/she is going to buy it right ?

If he/she does not want the *thing* no matter what SEO or what conversion optimization you do they will NOT buy !

Please tell me what I'm missing here ?

Well they might buy it, but not necessarily from you! With so much competition, you need to ensure every aspect of your web site is honed and toned to ensure these visitors stay on your site and make the purchase.

For example, a common 'fix' for a checkout system is to include links to returns policies, guarantees and delivery information in prominant places throughout the checkout process. How many times have you gone to a site with the intention to buy but been put off by the lack of information about refunds or no info on how long shipping times are? And what did you do? You probably went to another site that did have all that info, even if they were a little more expensive.

Then you have visitors who are just browsing around with little or no intention to buy. with a little thought and planning, you may be able to persuade that person to buy - e.g. careful placement of a special offer based on the google search term they found you on, or similar.

There's 1000s of things to look at improving on any site conversion; site colours, page copy, link text, image quality, page loading times, layouts, number of clicks to make a purchase, navigation structure, etc etc - and those are just the web design considerations. Tweak one aspect just right and you could see your turnover double overnight. Most of these things aren't something you can 'buy' in the form of an out-of-the-box solution, as many of them are simply down to you and your skill and expertise at understanding the psychology of buying.

It's important to understand the difference between conversion optimisation and search engine optimisation. SEO is merely a way to attract more visitors to your web site by improving your search engine ranking; conversion optimisation is about improving your success in turning these visitors into sales. Two completely different disciplines.

Unfortunately, I did not get any buyer psychology and genes when God passed them out.

Am I the only one who lays awake at night worrying about shopping cart abandonment rates?.

I suppose I Could buy a bunch of psychology books, hire a bunch of math wizzes to do A-B testing for months on end in order to come up with an optimal check out page design which reduces buyers resistance to its lowest level.

If somebody else had done all that will have the expertise and would be willing to sell the results of their findings. It does not sound like such a product exists.

In the meantime if any of you out there have a checkout page that experiences less than 25% abandonment rate, Why don't you package it up as a template. I will be your first customer.

Already done:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/193...Fencoding=UTF8

Just get any half decent ecomm software and apply the principles in this book. Then continue to experiment until you hit the nail on the head.