Questions? (877) 643-7244
Visit Our Blog
Don’t Overlook These Common Cart Mistakes
By Brendan Regan
November 14th, 2008
I’ve seen a few big shopping cart no-nos lately, so I just want to alert Grok readers to them–they’re pretty easy to avoid:
- The Homepage Dump: You add an item to your cart and are thrown into the checkout process. You’ve got another item on your shopping list, so you click the little link that says “Continue Shopping.” You’re dumped on the homepage. This is especially bad when you’ve done a lot of searching and results-filtering, and now it’s all gone. It really does feel like you’ve just been dumped! I can’t think of any good reason why the homepage is the proper place to land a visitor to continue shopping.
- The Painful Multi-Item Purchase: Many shopping carts make no distinction between adding to cart and checking out. As soon as you add to cart, the website assumes that you want to checkout and sends you down that path. But what if you’re not ready? We all know from the offline world that putting a bag of chips in a real shopping cart, and standing in the checkout line secretly reading tabloid headlines are two very different things, right? More robust shopping carts allow an item to be added to the cart without interrupting the browsing process. When visitors are ready to checkout, they intuitively know how to initiate that process from any page with one click. Threadless.com and Amazon.com both do decent jobs of this in their own unique ways. A good test for this one is to go through a multi-item purchase on your site without using any of your cross-selling or up-selling elements. It should still be easy to browse >> add to cart >> browse again >> add to cart again >> check out.
Hopefully, you’ve skimmed these two issues and they don’t apply. Pat yourself on the back and maybe focus on testing and optimizing your cart instead.
About the author
Brendan Regan is a Senior Persuasion Analyst. Prior to joining FutureNow, he worked in B2C online travel and B2B marketing. He likes to grok web design, user experience, and persuasive copywriting.
More articles from Brendan Regan
Loading
- Nobody wants to read your sh**!September 21st, 2009
- Redesign? Ask The Right Questions!September 18th, 2009
- Cross-post: How to Improve a Product Page, Part 1September 15th, 2009
For More, Subscribe To Grok!
- Capterra: The Conference Sept 13-15, Wash., DC
- "Recession Marketing: From Pre-click to Post-click" (webinar) Sept 16, 12pm EDT / 9am PDT
- "Securing the Sale: Turn Your Site's Browsers Into Buyers" (webinar) Sept 17, 2pm EDT / 11am PDT
- Excellence and Innovation conference Sept 28-30, Orlando
- The SEM Conference
Sept 23-24, Oslo, Norway - eConsultancy Peer Summit Oct 8, New York City
- The Bolo Conference Oct 12-14, Scotsdale, AZ
- Google GAAC/WOAC annual meetings
Oct 13-16, Googleplex California - eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit Oct 19-23, Wash., DC
November 14th, 2008
10:08 am
I am guilty of the ‘add to cart’ and then sending them to the shopping cart page, instead of allowing them to keep browsing. I think I will work on this one, after Christmas.
November 14th, 2008
10:16 am
I’m still amazed that I find companies who spend lots of money getting me to visit their site, optimise everything for the perfect experience, then ruin it by trying to coerce me into letting them spam me with email. the sort of sites where they say:
Uncheck this box if you do not want to be contacted by us.
Dont tick this box if do not want to receive mailings.
I still cant believe Companies do this.
They should let me decide whether you have something worthwhile that I’d like to hear about in the future.
So desperate are they to add me to their CRM database they forget they might actually lose sales because of this tactic.
Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK
Boosting Sales for Small and Medium Sized Businesses by
helping them find, attract and keep Customers.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeashworth
http://MichaelAshworth.wordpress.com
November 14th, 2008
11:22 am
And add to this the cardinal sin of asking to log in or create an account (arrgh!) as soon as you click checkout, and before you have an idea of all costs involved in the transaction!
November 14th, 2008
11:48 am
You are 100% spot on here Brendan, but honestly it’s almost a toss up as to who to blame. We a few exceptions big companies don’t “get ecommerce” so they pay no attention to the “customer experience.”
If you own your own ecommerce site, it’s really important to find out what your cart software can and can’t do BEFORE you commit to them.
November 14th, 2008
12:09 pm
The “continue shopping” issue is a very interesting one, and one that is being tackled in many different ways. Some are better than others. Get Elastic did a great blog post on this topic back in February, http://www.getelastic.com/continue-shopping-usability/
(it seems that their blog post was motivated by “Grok’s Biggest Gripes”)
I agree with you that just dumping the visitor back on the homepage is not an optimal choice for someone who wants to continue shopping. However I’m not a huge fan of what Amazon does either. When I have been shopping there in the past and added an item to my cart, it reloads the page with a floating cart on the right side of a cross sell page. This leaves me wondering, “what has happened”. I was expecting to see a cart page that would allow me to prevue shipping cost before I continue shopping. I have been conditioned to expect a shopping cart page and have been confused and frustrated by not landing on one. I personally find it a little presumptuous that they expect that I want to buy more than one item. They could accomplish a similar goal by trying to cross sell me in a shopping cart, and provide a “multiple links” strategy that Get Elastic illustrated in their blog with Drs Foster & Smith and J Crew.
November 14th, 2008
12:17 pm
Yeah it is unfortunate when large e-commerce sites just get over complicated and turn off the visitor so much they just leave or get in their car and buy it at the mall.
November 17th, 2008
11:31 am
I would agree with your comment on multi-item purchase, BUT if you are a site with a Units Per Order around 1 – 1.5, it might not be optimal to not dump the customer in the cart.
The continue shopping button point is very valid. How many customers actually came in through the homepage, and why would they want to end up back there? Additionally, most site logos already link back to the homepage.
November 17th, 2008
3:12 pm
I advise people that often their are some useful learnings to be drawn from shopping in the real world.
Imagine you are in Wal Mart or Tesco and after placing every item in your shoping basket you find yourself deposited at the entrance to the store. Or perhaps find yourself at the checkout as they think you’ve finished shopping?
wouldn’t happen in real life….
Mike Ashworth
Marketing Coach and Consultant
Brighton and Hove, Sussex, UK
Boosting Sales for Small and Medium Sized Businesses by
helping them find, attract and keep Customers.
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeashworth
http://MichaelAshworth.wordpress.com
November 17th, 2008
11:07 pm
It’s strange to see this sort of post (so basic) but it’s true, it really is necessary. As a shopper it amazes me how many sites miss the “basics” despite having wonderful ajax checkout processes and great interfaces.
In relation to the add to basket/ checkout item, I’ve also seen a few major sites immediately changing their interface on the cart page to look like that of their checkout process (i.e. no navigation, no promotions). This strikes me as a similar and huge mistake as well. Afterall, if there’s no navigation it doesn’t matter what you call the page or what’s on it, people shouldn’t have to click “back” to get back to browsing.
November 18th, 2008
12:11 am
My Yahoo store does this and theirs no way to change it that i can see. Looks like i need to find another service or wait years for them to fix it.
November 18th, 2008
7:39 am
I think people are often led by the tools / technology (witness all the talk around social media this, social media that) rather than taking a deep interest in the behaviours of people.
November 18th, 2008
9:11 am
In the era of AJAX and other dynamic presentation technologies, I’d argue a visit to the shopping cart is outdated. Why take a user from their shopping results to show them what they know they just did? you could just pop a layer right over the top of the page they added to the cart from that lets the user manage, close it or select a checkout option. If they close it, they’re right where they left off, with no complex results caching solutions required.
Getting rid of the cart as page can really improve the ecommerce experience, IMO. It’s more like a cart since it follows you through the store.
November 18th, 2008
1:05 pm
thats a very good point.
In a real shop you don’t pick something up, think “thats what i need” then suddenly get trasnported to the checkout.
“oh sorry sir, we didn’t realise you still wanted to buy other stuff. Good luck finding your way back to where you just came from”.
November 19th, 2008
5:02 pm
Good post.
The cross-sell and up-sell elements in the buy-flow process are extremely important, but they’re flawed.
The consumer will never be fully happy with the online shopping experience until the shopping cart issue is addressed.
Check out my recent blog post that dives further into this topic: http://lunchpail.knotice.com/2008/07/23/5-mistakes-that-promote-cart-abandonment/
November 21st, 2008
7:46 am
[...] the homepage; as Brendan Regan points out on GrokDotCom, the ‘homepage dump’ is [...]
November 21st, 2008
8:17 pm
[...] the homepage; as Brendan Regan points out on GrokDotCom, the ‘homepage dump’ is a user experience mistake to avoid, so where should they be [...]
November 24th, 2008
7:03 am
Great Article. I got some points to work on. Also comments provide some good inputs too.
November 24th, 2008
2:00 pm
Great comments, all! Lots to think about, and I’m sure I’ll revisit this topic again.
February 7th, 2009
10:39 pm
[...] Don’t Overlook These Common Cart Mistakes (FutureNow) [...]
April 25th, 2009
1:37 am
hi all,
It’s also very helpful to over inventory because you can choose your products inventory according to the consumption.
in my opinion its best online software for your business. every item in your shopping basket you find yourself deposited at the entrance to the store. Or perhaps find yourself at the checkout as they think you’ve finished shopping?
May 7th, 2009
5:24 am
The continue shopping button is an important page element on shopping cart pages. Potentially, a good design can increase the average order value of websites (or decrease it J ). Therefore choosing the name of the button, the position and the selection of colors and size may affect the defined KPI of the page displaying it. We analyzed 102 continue shopping buttons from well know websites and we put the collection on our blog. Have a look and leave a comment.
July 11th, 2009
9:48 am
re: #2.. why do sites do this.. c’mon!! =)
July 11th, 2009
3:32 pm
As a website developer I can say that there are a lot of things wrong with many ecommerce sites. However, the problem usually resides in the software used. Coding an ecommerce site from scratch would take a very large budget, so most developers start with an open source application like zen cart or magento.
Seeing better ecommerce sites really has to begin with the communities that create the platforms.
October 8th, 2009
11:35 pm
My site have shoping cart and I alway try check bug on it. thank
October 11th, 2009
1:02 am
# My site have shoping cart and I alway try check bug on it. thank
Me Too
October 12th, 2009
4:41 am
I agree with idea.
October 15th, 2009
4:39 pm
#
I agree with idea.
November 3rd, 2009
4:21 pm
I advise people that often their are some useful learnings to be drawn from shopping in the real world.
November 27th, 2009
1:57 pm
Thanks for the “testing and optimizing your cart” link.
March 3rd, 2010
6:53 pm
I absolutely hate the “homepage dump!” That has to be the most disruptive thing you can do to a buyer.
March 16th, 2010
2:10 pm
Great Article. I have do some improvement to one of my site. But developing from the int ital stage it will take time. Thanks for sharing thought.