A survey carried out on US web users has revealed that customers with plenty of information during the buying process can help to convert more browsers to buyers.

2,873 US online shoppers were surveyed and amongst other findings, it was revealed that almost half of consumers have abandoned their shopping carts because they couldn’t find the information they wanted.

56% of consumers surveyed said they wanted to be able to access information during the checkout process

The survey was carried out by Harris Interactive.

Further reading:
Shopping Cart Abandonment
84% of Online Shoppers Don’t Browse

Hot Trends is Google’s new Google Trends feature that will now report the top 100 ‘hottest’ search queries for each day.

For each ‘hot’ search query, you can view a graph that displays the popularity of the query, related searches and the top results from Google News, Blog Search and Web Search. These results should explain to you why the queries are so popular.

How do google define a hot trend?

Google say they use an algorythm to identify a sudden rise in a query phrase, that is not the norm for that query.  The higher the sudden rise, the hotter the topic.

You will also be able to access an archive of ‘hot’ trends - just select a past date and up pop the ‘hottest’ queries for that day!  See the people, the news and the events which defined that day in history!

At the moment Google only shows the “hottest” queries in the US, but it is expected that other countries will follow.

When you click on a search query you can even see how popular that search query is in a certain city or state and compare these stats from city to city.

I expect to see things of this nature a lot more in the future on Google’s various properties, what do you think?

For those of you taking advantage of Google Analytics, many of you may have received an email from google this morning announcing its new features and interface.

Google’s hope is to offer more comprehensive data to those shopping cart owners that need it, and simplify the vast amounts of data available to webmasters.

The main upgrades to Google Analytics include:

1. Email reports and clearer graphs to enable users to understand data and draw solutions to potential problems.
2. Plain, straight forward language descriptions to help users better understand what the statistics mean and what can be done to improve their website.
3. Score cards that help to explain what certain statistics refer to.
4. The dashboard also has more customisable features.

In a recent update Viart shopping cart software actually introduced a new feature that allows you to integrate Google Analytics into your shop (8th point down).  For those Viart owners that haven’t done that yet - I would definitely recommend it.  Every shopping cart owner should analyse their traffic as it can often reveal a lot about where problem areas exist in a website, for example, points at which a user is leaving a website and as a result not converting into a customer.  For marketing a website online, Google Analytics is a great tool.  It can tell you where your traffic is currently coming from, what keyterms they are using to find your shopping cart and much more.

If your Google Analytics account hasn’t been upgraded yet, don’t worry, Google only started yesterday and will continue to upgrade accounts for the next several weeks.

As you may already know Google Checkout recently launched in the UK.  Google Checkout has actually been available in the US for just less than a year now and Hitwise have just made available some statistics showing how the take up of google checkout is going so far in the US.

The statistics show that PayPal received 67 times more of a larger share than Google Checkout did.  This is not greatly suprising given that PayPal have built up trust over a long period of time.

The statistics also revealed a huge peak in visitors around the period of time when Google launched a big promotion - $10 to $30 off purchases.  The same is likely to happen in the UK given that Google are similarly offering £10 off purchases of £30 or more.

Newsletter functionality is on almost everyone’s list when choosing their shopping cart software.

They’re a great marketing tool for engaging customers, telling them about special promotions and offers, and generating repeat business.

There’s a great article about newsletters and shopping cart software over at Practical Ecommerce - Definately worth a read!