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E-tailers could increase online sales by a projected US$20 billion per year through the introduction of "presence" services according to this study by Basex. Presence technology, such as instant messaging for "customer-to-customer" communication, has the potential to significantly reduce the shopping cart abandonment rate, one of the largest concerns in E-tailing today, by an estimated twenty percent. Basex research shows that the four greatest causes of shopping cart abandonment today are the lack of surprise, lack of interaction, clinical shopping experience, and technical and usability difficulties on e-commerce Web sites. By introducing presence/instant messaging into the equation -- allowing users to chat with other users who are in the same "virtual aisle" (on the same web page) as they are -- three of the four causes of shopping cart abandonment would be eliminated. This report is a must-read for companies that rely on online transactions of any sort (including E-tailers, financial service firms and others), as well as those vendors implementing presence services in their tools. |
