Best Practices in Shopping Cart Design Part 2

(You can read the first part of Best Practices in Shopping Cart Design here)

Too much candy can distract the eye

When planning the overall design or theme of your site try to keep things somewhat low key, too much eye candy will pull your visitors attention away from the actual products you are promoting. Try to avoid extensive use of flash animations, JavaScript effects, video and sound. A simple header logo along with graphics introducing special offers or discounts should be plenty for the actual store front. The only place the on-line shopping cart can be graphics heavy is within the actual product information pages, here the rule of thumb is the more pictures the better. If your store visitor spends time looking at a good selection of images for a product then they are being forced to concentrate upon it, a single picture can be viewed and dismissed in a split second. Add an image gallery for the product, with suitable image navigation and your customer is effectively locked into that product for the time they spend browsing the images.

Here is an example of an on-line store which uses a simple theme which does not cause the visitor to lose focus on the products:

simple theme which does not cause the visitor to lose focus on the products

You get what you see

When developing a new shopping cart and on-line store pay attention to the overall theme of the site and it’s compatibility with the range of products you are selling. For a somewhat over the top example let’s imagine that a website is selling digital cameras, the web developer puts together a site using extensive use of the colour pink, uses cartoon style graphics and large, exotic fonts. Do you think this design actually fits with digital cameras in any way? Maybe a baby clothing store but not digital cameras. It is not enough to simply drop in images relating to the type of products you are going to be selling; the entire site needs to focus around the products, and more importantly the type of customer who is likely to buy them. Using the digital camera store as an example once more, the kind of customer likely to make a purchase would be more comfortable with a website design that uses discrete colours, a simple page layout and graphics that would appeal to a person with a technical mindset. In summary, make sure your store design reflects your product range accurately and appeals to your typical customer.

Here is a great example of a baby store using a template which fits its products and customers perfectly:

a template which fits its products and customers perfectly

Where am I?

Nothing frustrates an on-line purchaser more than not being able to locate the product they are hoping to purchase. Implementing a sensible navigation system for your shopping cart and on-line store is vital. Breadcrumb navigation is one very good way to help out your visitor, and combined with a well featured search facility this would provide adequate navigation. However, you will need to make sure that your actual catalogue is well structured. Implementing product groups, price banding and a similar products feature will greatly enhance navigation.

Here we see in the top left corner of this image an on-line store using breadcrumb navigation to help the customer navigate:

an on-line store using breadcrumb navigation to help the customer navigate

Tell me more

OK, for this section let’s take an imaginary walk through a shoe shop. You purchase a new pair of shoes, how do you go about choosing the right pair? Firstly you know what size you require, so this dismisses a huge range of shoes already. Next you probably have an idea of the colour you want, this eliminates even more, finally you start considering the style, and it is at this stage that you actually start looking at the less apparent features of the shoes. So with this in mind, when putting a product page together do not overdo the amount of information you present at the top level. You prospective customer doesn’t need to know everything about a product to make a quick yes or no choice, they will winnow their way through a range of products and shortlist the ones they are interested in. It is only at this stage that they will start to compare overall features. By presenting the most important product facts at the top level and implementing a “more information” link which opens the entire product specification page you will avoid confusing the customer by giving them too much information to hold in their short term memory. This is a far more comfortable product selection process for almost every on-line purchaser.

Here is an on-line store making use of excellent breadcrumb navigation to display pertinent product details along with an option to show more information:

display pertinent product details along with an option to show more information

Go cart!

When you are designing the features of the actual shopping cart module of your on-line store make sure it has every feature required to make changes to the contents of the cart. The customer should be able to remove items, change the quantity of items ordered and recalculate the total of goods in the cart easily. Use simple navigation which is obvious, avoid text links if possible, discrete graphics work best. Finally, always present a clearly visible “proceed to checkout” link on the shopping cart page.

Here is a great example of a fully featured yet easy to use shopping cart page:

fully featured yet easy to use shopping cart page

Grab the cash

It is absolutely vital that the checkout process is as straightforward as can be. Avoid presenting page after page of forms to be filled in. If you absolutely must ask for both a billing address and a delivery address then ask for these on the same page and offer a feature that allows the billing address to be used as the delivery address without having to re-type the information over again. Where possible try to adopt the idea of a single page checkout, where the client is presented with a single page of information which needs to be supplied along with payment details, a single click of a button should complete the process in a single step. Your checkout must be entirely robust; it must work 100% of the time, no errors, no failed transactions, and no interface problems to your payment gateway. Statically it has been proven that a customer experiencing problems at the checkout stage will abandon the entire order and shop elsewhere in over 90% of cases.

Here is a very simple, easy to navigate and well designed checkout page, note that there is nothing complicated here, the customer is left to concentrate on filling in the correct information:

the customer is left to concentrate on filling in the correct information

Learn from history

Almost every major shopping cart application has the ability to capture historical data; this will include not only sales but visitor usage statistics. Use this valuable data whenever you can. For example, if you find that a particular product is being viewed frequently, yet seldom purchased, and a similar product at a slightly lower price is often chosen instead, then you have found yourself a highly viable product to discount. Similarly, if you find certain products that are seldom viewed, then you know you have a product line you should drop. There are dozens of ways in which historic data can be used to help drive your business; far too many to list in this short article, just remember that all data is good data once you find a way to exploit it.

Conclusion

So there we have it, some very basic information about the major issues faced by on-line store operators. As we can clearly see, although on-line retail works in a completely different way to conventional retail, there are some startling similarities when it comes to product marketing and store design. Many of the marketing techniques used by traditional high street stores can be adapted for use by the on-line retailer. You need to implement a stylish store, easily navigated, which provides your prospective customer with a comfortable environment in which to make purchases.