Why don’t webmasters just get it, when it comes to e-commerce you should really look at the marketplaces you want to sell to.
I tend not to find many problems with international sites if they have an international team working on them, but so many times recently I have stop short of completing the purchase due to bad checkout pages.
My favourite NO NO is give me all your data before you can go any further, really why ? you can collect all the data once you have my credit card details, don’t make me give up my email address so that I can add to the basket, that’s stupid.
The awesome thing about the web is choice, and it is choice that enables me to jump from store to store quicker than I can jump in a taxi and drive store to store. So make sure that your store layout is what your customer wants.
A quick straw poll showed : that in the Inkjet Cartridge industry ( stress purchase ), that consumers DIDN’T wake up in the morning and think my Canon photo printer has been awesome recently I’m going to treat it too some new Ink !!, No you buy ink in a stress purchase, you have just run out, you want it next day, in fact you want it NOW! So try to give your consumers an in and out cart, get them in… get them out with the Ink they need, up sell on QTY and other cartridges eg. black – Tricolour – Cyan – Magenta etc etc. don’t waste time offering web cams and laptops that can be done in a follow up email later 
And make sure your checkout is slick and working 100% of the time. You will not get a second bite of the cherry on a stress purchase.
When it comes to luxury items or items that take a bit more planning, try to store the products that people have looked for, offer brochures. You have time to sell here. In the Building industry offer up advice and supporting items, example if someone has added a Shower Unit and shower cubicle, offer up a PUMP or Extra Jets !! or even for designer radiators these consumers are building a lifestyle purchase and don’t just flash the old credit card … it can take 1 – 2 months to get the sale, but giving them the information and support you will get that sale.
btw my company has been building successful Carts for years, If you think I wrong or missed something TELL ME !
DaveN
18 Comments
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20th November 2007 @ 12:02
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I’ve seen a few online stores that seem to really get “it”. They offer the option of checking out without having to create an online count. Sometimes you know that your purchase is a one-off so this option saves you from having to remember another password. And presumably this doesn’t have any longterm impact on the mailing list since these one-time buyers would likely opt-out.
20th November 2007 @ 12:55
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Dave you’re absolutely right with this post. I’ve seen some terrible websites over the years with seven and eight stage checkouts and have given up by stage 4 or 5.
Not quite a checkout problem but one problem I’ve always found difficult to resolve is that of the financial services sector - where large amounts of info are required before a credit check and a decision can be made legally. The only way I’ve found to get round this is a phone call or email back before any applications are started / completed.
20th November 2007 @ 13:32
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As much as I wasn’t convinced when it was first unveiled, Google Checkout makes the checkout process a breeze.
20th November 2007 @ 17:43
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I see a lot of poorly implemented carts out there.
Booking a coach ticket at National Express is a doddle and they cater for the “book, pay and go” customers very well, by asking for minimal information. They also have a sign up process for regular customers who return regularly.
By way of a contrast, booking a train ticket in the UK is generally a nightmare with no clear direction as to how to navigate the process to completion, and requiring sign-in (on most sites) before they will even divulge the prices.
Maybe cart design should be a topic at the next SES or SMX perhaps?
22nd November 2007 @ 17:48
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If any one has time I would be interested in your feed back on our new cart and if you think we have missed anything, I have tried to think about what drives me up the wall when I use site. Also tried to make the whole design easer to get to were you want to be.
Homeandgardengifts .co.uk
Thanks in advance
23rd November 2007 @ 00:26
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The thing that really gets me is sites you have to register (sorry set up an account) with just to find out there postage cost!!!!
23rd November 2007 @ 00:28
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It can be quite tricky to build a good shopping cart and checkout process. It’s usually an iterative process to get it absolutely right. There are some general no no’s, but usually the important thing is to understand your users. The most iportant process in the ecommerce build is to TEST IT. After you’ve done your first draft, put the site in front of a few of your potential customers (or some people who can put their ‘hat’ on). These people preferably shouldn’t have been involved in the design/development process, and should be seeing the site ‘fresh’ for the first time. Get their honest, unbiased opinions, and be prepared to make changes. It’s also important to remeber that if you’ve gone with a shopping cart plugin, make sure it’s suitably customizable, so you can tweak it based on user feedback.. or have your developers aware that changes are gonna be likely.
Even the experts rarely get it right first time. The important thing is to build flexibility in from the start, listen to users, and learn from mistakes.
23rd November 2007 @ 11:40
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a good start is to not use the pile of wank shopping cart that is oscommerce.
26th November 2007 @ 11:47
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A bad checkout will definitely impact sales. However, collecting customer details during the process is very important. If a customer doesn’t give their details, how are you supposed to follow up their order when its gone missing in the post? Or you get idiots that put the wrong email address and then call up thinking their items haven’t shipped even though they have been sent a dispatched notification.
Good examples of ‘1 page’ checkouts are on magentocommerce.com and elasticpath.com.
http://www.ry.com.au - a site I worked on. Its a hacked up zen cart using zen magick.
27th November 2007 @ 02:36
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I’m in the opinion that all shopping carts should be simple and stress free as possible. I also don’t mind registering as long as it’s also easy and quick.
I’m currently disliking Barclays EPDQ. Not only is the user taken away from the original site, they then have to go through a lengthy checkout process.
28th November 2007 @ 14:08
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These guys deserve a plug http://www.serif.com - Just bought a flash drive on there, and if I hadn’t had to leave the room to get my credit card I’d have been through order processing in under 60 seconds! Fantastic!
29th November 2007 @ 08:40
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Dave - we recently did an extensive survey asking merchants in various industries to comprise a wishlist of what they would call The Perfect Shopping cart.
Here are the results of this survey: http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/conversion-traffic-to-cash/t-the-perfect-shopping-cart-1448.html
29th November 2007 @ 11:45
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Registering or login in before you can complete your checkout is a big NO NO. On the other I want to see the total price (inclusive taxes,shipping,etc) of my order BEFORE they let me start with the whole process.
Like said before, you need to be able to test your different steps in the checkout in order to know what you need to fix. We’re running a few stores ourselves and in 1 of them we had an exit of 38% in the second step (2 of 3). We changed 1 button there and a textfield and were able to bring the exit back to 22%. Still 21% to much but we’re working on that.
dave
1st December 2007 @ 00:56
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I agree, you shouldn’t need to give your email address or personal information prior to checkout. Each eCommerce shopping cart solution is unique to the marketplace, as B2B and B2C are usually constructed differently. The main types of eCommerce sites that may require a login are B2B sites that offer special pricing and purchase options. eCommerce sites should make the shopping AND checkout procedure easy, like retail brick and mortar stores aim to do. I won’t shop on most international sites if I don’t have to, as I have been hacked before, so when inputting in your debit card number, be wary. Customers want a pleasant shopping experience on a site that is trustworthy.
2nd January 2008 @ 22:41
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@OsCommerce: Agreed, the original out of the box solution of OsCommerce has some pretty poor usability components, the checkout being an overly long one of these. However, as is the beauty of the system, there are a million and one modules/extras (contributions) out there that help solve this - one of which is the express checkout option which removes the need for registration from the process.
@Barclays ePDQ: Agreed, I really dislike their system, they ask you at the Barclays ePDQ page for billing and shipping details and it’s not straight forward to return these details to the store so in effect you may be asking for these TWO details TWICE on checkout! Also, their response codes are a nightmare, although that’s another issue altogether…
21st February 2008 @ 16:02
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Thanks for this one, If I am honest Magento is clearly the best eCommerce solution around at the moment. It is just great in alsmost every way. If it was optimized abit more to reduce server usage then yeah it would be PERFECT.
Thanks for the article though!
Richard.11th November 2008 @ 15:41
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It can be really challenging to compromise between being clear and giving the customers all the information about what they are really buying. A good example here is TLA (no, I don’t buy links there by the way…). Their shopping cart looks way too long and you have to provide details for each website you chose, but in this sphere it looks inevitable and they seem to have succeeded to make the process as smooth as possible.
16th November 2008 @ 09:15
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I like your point about making the customer giving their information before they pay. It also pisses me off when I am required to register before go any further.
In some niches it can be really challenging to compromise between being clear and giving the customers all the information about what they are really buying. A good example here is TLA (no, I don’t buy links there by the way…). Their shopping cart looks way too long and you have to provide details for each website you chose, but in this sphere it looks inevitable and they seem to have succeeded to make the process as smooth as possible. And also I like their MINI SHOPPING CART.