I have owned this website design company for over 10 years now and I have seen my share of good ideas as well as quite a few bad ideas. I can only make suggestions to clients about how I think things should be done and in the end the customer is always right. Even if they are completely wrong! Here are some thing that are good practice for the checkout process of an eCommerce website.
Show me what I put in my shopping cart and let me remove stuff easily.
When I add something to the cart I want to see it. Show me as much as you can. A thumbnail image, the product name that is a link back to the product details, price, sale price, quantity options and most importantly a REMOVE item button. That’s right… an easy way for the client to remove something from the cart.
Think about how people shop in stores. They walk around the store and they place things into a shopping cart. If they cannot decide on an item, but they are pretty sure they like it, they place it in the cart and walk around the store some more. Then right before they pay, they re-evaluate the cart contents and they might remove a couple items that they were not sure about. This happens all the time in eCommerce too and if you do not have a remove item button then you force the customer to empty the cart completely and start over or even worse the customer just leaves the site.
Don’t require cart registration.
To me this is basic eCommerce 101, don’t make it hard to your customers to give you money. That sounds like something everyone would understand. If you want to allow customer registration before letting them checkout, that is fine, allow it, but don’t require it. If you do allow it, then make sure it will give the customer some benefit. I have seen too many people just turn on and require cart registration just because the eCommerce system that they were offered it with no real reason. It really gave no benefit to the customer or the merchant.
Make the checkout pages clear and easy to follow.
Again it sounds simple, don’t clutter the checkout screens. Make them flow nicely from the top to the bottom where they proceed to the next step. This is not a place for large red warning text or paragraphs of terms and conditions. If you have information like this place a link to this data.
Show accurate shipping options and details.
Make it clear how much shipping is and offer only the correct shipping options for the Country or location that they are in. Always provide accurate shipping costs to the customer. A good way to lose a customer is to not define shipping costs. Don’t just put a disclaimer on the checkout page about how shipping costs will be calculated after the order is placed and the customer will be notified via email. I have seen that way to many times and it is a major roadblock for most customers. Would you give your credit card information if you did not know the final total of your order? I know I would have a hard time. Do the work on your site and get your products setup correctly so you can offer accurate shipping costs to your customers.
Reduce Weird Errors.
Errors are going to happen on the checkout screen, but make them with the customer in mind. Weird error codes and technical jargon is not going to help the customer checkout. If they forgot the zip code, let them know they forgot the zip code and don’t just say “Some fields are not filled out’. Just make it clear for your customers.
These are just a few quick eCommerce etiquette tips that can improve your website. If I left any out or if you have some to share please leave them in the comments area.
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Nice!
Great article! I found your site through your post on GetElastic.com. I love reading everything I can about ecommerce. Can’t wait to fully digest this site.