User session timeout

[fakeDecoy]

Wish I could readily find/remember what changes are necessary, but you say that the nature of your site results in customers taking an extended time to purchase. Is the time involved in manipulating the product and info to get the product to the cart, or in "deciding" to purchase what is in the cart?

If the later, then if the customers were logged in (forced?) then items in their cart would remain with them and not lost...

Perhaps with the business need further described the assistance needed to make this happen (or perhaps a better method) will be provided?

They could buy quick, but the average order value is high enough that they shop around a bit. Finally they learn my prices are the lowest, create an account, and pull the trigger. A session lasting a full day would be good enough to catch the people who shop in the morning and come back in the evening, but indefinitely would be better. Heck, maybe the admin only lasts a day if that 99999 seconds is right. I work in the admin so often that maybe I rarely have a chance to test that.

People at this point generally know they need to log in to save their cart, but sometimes they are shopping around or get busy at work, and their cart still waiting for them on a temp session will save some frustration and abandonment.

I know on Amazon my cart is always there for days and days, as on other sites, so let's not pretend that this deal with carts expiring after 24 mins is the standard. I need to log in again on Amazon, but it still has my cart waiting before I even log in. I guess that's a distinction I haven't made. I'm ok with forcing a login again after a few hours, but the cart should last much longer even without logging in.