Shopping Cart
Internet Program
Shopping Cart
Tips and Featured Shopping Cart Programs
Most small businesses need a shopping
cart internet program. A shopping cart program allows a customer to
select products, view the pricing, and create their order. Shopping
carts almost always come with secure HTTPS/SSL
shopping cart, complete order processing, reporting, and
integrates easily into your web site and with your payment
processors. Many shopping carts can
come with a merchant account to accept credit cards, a shipping
module to calculate shipping charges, multi-currency, digital
delivery, client management, integrated tax tables, order fraud
protection, sales analysis, advertisement integration, inventory
tracking, affiliate programs, and much more depending on
price. Please read our featured article, Shopping Cart
Usability below. Also, review our featured Shopping Cart Internet
Programs.
Shopping Cart Usability
by Lee
Roberts |
Usable Shopping Carts Increase Sales
E-commerce
has been around since 1993 under many different names, but one thing
remains constant; shoppers want usable web sites. Without a usable
shopping cart the sites typically fail from poor performance. To
succeed in the world of e-commerce and on the Internet web sites
must be developed to be usable by patrons as well as search
engines.
The most
successful sites have been turning to web analytic software to tell
them how people use their site. When they notice a break in their
site they go in to determine the problem. Marketers tend to think
the words on the site are the breaking points; while this may, in
part be true, it is more often how the site operates and makes
shopping easier for the customer.
Elements
of a Usable Shopping Cart
Before a
usable shopping cart can be developed several elements must be
realized and controlled. Not all things can be overcome, but all
things can be controlled. Understanding human nature and how people
use new tools can help in controlling the most challenging
situations.
Site
Navigation
Site
navigation must be as easy as possible. Without making the
navigation as easy as possible customers will become confused and
frustrated which encourages them to leave without purchasing.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are the links found in web sites that show
the hierarchical path of the page. Not everyone enters a site
through the front page and breadcrumbs make it much easier to reach
related products without having to dig around the site.
Adding
Items to the Cart
Shoppers
want to see some visual confirmation that the action they take
works. Sites that fail to provide visual cues lose customers due to
confusion and the thought that the site doesn't work.
JavaScript
JavaScript
requires the browser to support JavaScript. Without the ability to
support JavaScript or with JavaScript turned off, functions that
require JavaScript can't work. Vital shopping cart functions should
not be developed in such a way that JavaScript is required.
Flash
Flash
requires the shopper to support the version of Flash being used.
People that support Flash 4 can't support Flash MX without
upgrading. Customers will leave for another store if they are
required to upgrade their plug-ins. At the very least, it will
require that they have to download the plug-in and start the
shopping experience from the very beginning.
Checkout Process
The
checkout process should be as short as possible. The faster a person
can checkout the faster the customer can be on their way to other
things.
Checkout Progress
Each step
of the checkout progress should indicate the current step and the
total number of steps. This helps the customer know where they are
in the process and the number of steps remaining.
Ask for
Information in the Proper Order
Credit
card information should never be asked for until after all the
charges have been calculated and presented to the customer. Asking
for this information prior to disclosing the full charges will cause
the shopper to abandon the cart.
Advantages of Usable Shopping Carts
Usable
shopping carts open the market to the consumer. By making a shopping
cart usable to the consumer the process of shopping online is less
threatening and actually becomes more inviting. NetIQ, the
developers of WebTrends, has developed a successful system that
helps web site owners, marketing specialists and web development
teams make more usable and helpful web sites.
Understanding how shoppers use one's site and shopping
cart can help turn more visitors into purchasing customers. The
national average for shopping cart conversion is two percent;
however that conversion rate can be increased through having more
usable web sites and shopping carts. Multiple paths to the products
and easier checkout processes can help greatly.
About
the author: Lee Roberts is the President/CEO of Rose Rock Design, Inc. and
owner of the Apple Pie
shopping cart
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