Patent ID: 7047213

Claim:
A method for purging shopping carts from an electronic commerce web site operated by a merchant, said electronic commerce web site comprising a web server, said method comprising the steps of: identifying, upon occurrence of a next update time, guest shopping carts and established shopping carts existing at the electronic commerce web site, the guest shopping carts being shopping carts that belong to guest shoppers of the electronic commerce web site, the established shopping carts being shopping carts that belong to established shoppers of the electronic commerce web site, a guest shopper being defined as a shopper who does not have any prior relationship of record with the merchant, an established shopper being defined as a shopper who has a prior relationship of record with the merchant; determining the total number (L) of guest shopping carts existing at the electronic commerce web site; ascertaining whether L exceeds a specified guest shopper threshold number (M) of guest shopping carts existing at the electronic commerce web site, wherein if said ascertaining ascertains that L does not exceed M then again performing the identifying, determining steps, and ascertaining steps, and wherein if said ascertaining ascertains that L exceeds M then the method further comprises the steps of: purging a subset of the guest shopping carts from the electronic commerce web site according to a first algorithm that is specific to the guest shopping carts, said first algorithm being comprised by the web server; purging a subset of the established shopping carts from the electronic commerce web site according to a second algorithm that is specific to the established shopping carts, said second algorithm being comprised by the web server, said second algorithm differing from the first algorithm; and again performing the identifying, determining steps, and ascertaining steps, after performing the steps of purging the subset of the guest shopping carts and purging the subset of the established shopping carts.