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While there's no telling what shoppers might be willing to brave this year for the sake of low prices, an eCommerce site shouldn't remind users of a military gauntlet.  Speakers at an SES Chicago session called "eCommerce 101: Optimizing your Shopping Cart for Search and Conversion" discussed ways to make shopping experiences pleasant and productive, instead.

(Coverage of SES Chicago continues at WebProNews Videos.  Keep an eye on WebProNews for more notes and videos from the event this week.)

Ethan Giffin, the CEO of Groove Commerce, started by recommending that sites never present a simple "no results" page.  Rather, these situations should be used as an opportunity to promote best-selling products.  This makes it easier for customers to take action, which should always be a top goal.

Pete Olson, Amadesa's vice president of product management, continued that thought by suggesting that businesses test cart and checkout flow and take action on the results.  "A 10% lift in conversions represents a 10% lift in revenue," he pointed out.

Vic Cleary, 2 CheckOut's eCommerce strategy manager, agreed, saying, "Small changes can be a big deal."  A small change let his company earn an extra $8 million per year, for example.  So he recommends identifying the customer, testing incremental changes, and then just repeating the process over and over.

 Chris Boggs

Finally, Brulant's manager of SEO, Chris Boggs, stated, "It's easy to optimize the site, but you have to make it search friendly - big difference."  Check, in particular, that URLs are search friendly, and consider using sitemaps and robots.txt in unison.

Boggs also noted, "You're spending a lot of money on optimization, but creating unique content is just as important."