E-Commerce Shopping Cart Considerations
There is nothing easy about building an e-commerce site, making
it work, and attracting traffic. Setting it up properly means dealing
with thousands of details, no less than when putting together a
brick-and-mortar business. Obviously, it's impossible to address
all of them in 600 words or less, but one vital detail deserves
attention: the shopping cart.
Customers often abandon shopping carts, driving e-commerce site
owners to distraction. If you want to increase conversions and decrease
the number of abandoned shopping carts on your site, think like
a customer. How can you arrange your shopping cart to make them
more comfortable with the process?
Customers hate getting lost. If you have a multi-step checkout
process, make sure you display those steps prominently at the top,
and highlight whichever step the purchaser is on at that moment
(for example “Address information,” “Choosing Your Item,” “Review
Your Purchase,” etc.).
Give your customers the flexibility to browse your site while they're
filling out your order form; they might find something else they
want to buy. That means making sure the shopping cart “remembers”
information if the back button is pressed (but you probably don't
want it to remember bank or credit card numbers, for security reasons).
After all, customers also hate retyping information – which brings
up another issue. If your site requires a billing address in addition
to a shipping address, include a check box for “same as shipping.”
That's just one example of the general principle in action.
Customers also hate surprises. If there are shipping costs, make
sure you show those as early as possible. If you have a minimum
shipping cost, you can start by displaying that before your customer
even begins to check out.
Customers need to feel safe. If your site has earned trust marks,
such as Hackersafe or Verisign Secured, be sure to display them
both on your product pages and during your checkout process. This
might even be worth doing split testing to see where to put them
on the page for best conversion results.
Customers hate extra hassles and confusion. Don't make them register
or provide an e-mail address unless it's absolutely necessary. You
can always ask for that after the sale. And if you request a phone
number, make sure you provide a link to an explanation of why of
you need it and how you will use it (can you say “privacy policy”?).
Oh, and while you're at it, make sure your error messages clearly
explain the problem and what the customer needs to do to get rid
of it. Better yet, program the shopping cart to accommodate possible
errors or make them less possible. Oh, and make sure the already-entered
information is not forgotten while the error is fixed (see previous
comment about how customers hate retyping information).
Finally, if you use a page that lets customers review their orders,
make it crystal clear that this is a review page, and not a “thank
you” page. SEO Chat forum member realityhack, who provided these
guidelines from his own hard-won experience, notes that otherwise
“people...will print your review page and wonder why their order
never arrived.” And since customers hate being made to feel stupid,
that's one lost sale you might be hard-pressed to get back. Good
luck!
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