One of the most effective ways in which online retailers can reduce shopping cart abandonment rates and boost conversions is by clearly displaying shipping costs upfront.

This is according to PayPal, which says that 40 per cent of cases of online basket abandonment can be prevented by telling shoppers upfront how much it will cost to deliver their purchases.

A survey conducted for the online payment system by comScore found that 45 per cent of online shoppers have abandoned an e-commerce basket more than once in the last three weeks, with high shipping costs among the top reasons for doing so.

"To get shoppers to buy, it's critical merchants make the checkout experience easy and costs transparent," said Eddie Davis of PayPal.

Other obstacles to higher online conversion rates were found to include security worries, being unable to find a way of contacting customer support, not being able to use a preferred payment option and consumers needing to compare products or find a discount voucher.

Some £3.7 billion was spent on purchases from e-commerce websites in the UK in May 2009, according to the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.

This represented an 8.2 per cent year-on-year increase.
 

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