Persistence

Here's a quick test of your shopping cart that you should do right now:

1. Place a item in your shopping cart, logging in if it's necessary to do so.
2. Close your browser completely. 
3. Open a browser and return to your site. 

If your shopping cart still has the item from Step 1 in it, congratulations!

Otherwise, you may want to consider an improved shopping cart.  Nowadays, most customers expect a persistent shopping cart  (thanks to places like Amazon.com).

Don't disappoint them.

Comments

[rick]

one other thing.. set up your analytics to extend the time it takes for the cookie to expire. If someone looks at your site, bookmarks it and then comes back 2 weeks later you want to be able to see they're the same person not a different one. IF the cookie window is too short, the cookie from the first visit will expire and they'll get a new one on the second visit. They look like 2 people at that point. If you set the window to 30 days, they will look like one.

See this article for an excellent overview on how to use analytics on a site. It's Google Analytics centric, but the principles will work with other packages:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/09/rules-choosing-web-analytics-key-performance-indicators.html