customers shopping cart being emptied

[vickilapp]

This is the most common complaint, and I've been getting it so frequently, I'd like to figure out how to address it. After sending an email through the "recovered cart sales" function, a customer emailed us with this:

"I created the order and left my computer to get the payment information out of my office. When I got back to the computer your site advised me that my shopping cart was now empty. I cannot find any button on your site to allow me to access my shopping cart. I assumed the delay in completing the order caused my shopping cart to be emptied, unlike other sites I visit. I did not re-do the order yet, though now I see from your email that I can now re-access the order through this email. In future, how do I re-access my shopping cart/order to continue processing it?"

Another email from a customer:

"The Bead Inspirations shopping cart empties after just a few hours --not even a full day. Some of these items I had put in the cart multiple times, then gone off to do my research. During that time I rebuilt my shopping cart several times. In the end I simply ran out of gas and failed to complete the order before the sale ended. I think the shopping experience would be improved if you extend the length of time the shopping cart is open to at least a few days."

Customers have posted these reviews:

"At one point my shopping cart emptied while shopping. I have no idea why, I had not left it unattended. I had to re-create my order, very annoying."

"I was interrupted several times while shopping on site and my shopping cart disappeared!"

"My shopping cart dropped my items and I had to reload."

"shopping cart kept dumping my selections..."

"Annoying that your shopping cart empties every 24 hours!!!!!!"

"shopping cart keep kicking out items . ."

"Shopping cart was not in usual place at top of page."

What can we do to improve the shopper experience? Also, we used to get big orders, but haven't in some time... could it be because if they are spending a lot of time on our site filling up the shopping cart, the zencart will dump the cart after 20 minutes because they haven't logged in yet?

Would it be accurate to put this on our website someplace?:
"There is a built-in 20-minute timer in the shopping cart. If you don't click anything on the site for 20 minutes, things will reset themselves, and the shopping cart will empty. If you log in before leaving the website for 20 minutes, then your cart contents will be saved so they can pick up where you left off."

How can I address this? Can we increase the time it takes before their carts get dumped? Thanks for your responses!

We are using v1.5.1, upgraded from v1.3.

Vicki Lapp
http://beadinspirations.com

[lat9]

Vicki, you might try the Keep Cart plugin (http://www.zen-cart.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=992). It's for v1.3.8, but it probably will work with slight updates for v1.5.x. Essentially, it creates a cookie for the customer's cart so that they don't have to worry about the session timeout.

[vickilapp]

Thanks for the tip on Keep Cart. Unfortunately, I've installed it and it is not working. I don't have any additional options in the Sessions area. I currently have v1.5.4. Has anyone had success with Keep Cart mod?