RSSJanuary 25th, 2007
Shopping Cart Frustration (part 1 of 2)
Over the holidays I was doing a lot of Christmas shopping online, like so many others this past year. I love it, it’s just so easy . . . or at least I wish it was. Maybe I am a little critical, but there are some foundational mistakes being made during the checkout process by major merchants.
The checkout process is so important, yet it sometimes seems overlooked. This is the “make or break” point with a customer, and every effort must be made to close the sale. This two-part article will provide some commonly overlooked elements of a checkout process.
Today I will focus on CircuitCity.com. I would like to preface this by saying they seem to be a very nice company, and their website is quite useful. I found it very easy to browse and find the product I wanted. Their reviews are also very helpful in making an educated decision. However, I feel that a couple elements about their checkout process could be refined.
In my particular case, I wanted to buy a wireless router. I knew exactly what I wanted, so I proceeded to find the product. The product page was very informative, and I was ready to add the item to my cart.
Before adding the item, I thought it would be a great idea to pick up one for my home’s upstairs. Unfortunately I could not find a place to specify the quantity, so I just added it to my cart. Surely I could change the quantity later, right?
There are a lot of things right about this screen. It shows a picture and the name of the product being added to my cart. The thumbnail and product name link back to the product in case I want to go back and verify something. It’s great practice to always show a thumbnail and link back to the product throughout checkout.
This page also had one major problem: I still could not specify a quantity or edit anything in my cart. In going back to research for this article, I noticed that there is a small text link to “Edit Cart” to the right of my screenshot, but I honestly never saw it. In my opinion, I should not have to make another click just to specify a quantity that should have been available on the product page.
This last screen in particular was frustrating. I am now aware that I will not have the opportunity to edit my quantity before making the purchase. Yet, I click on the product name (in both places) and realize it is no longer a link. The only way I can view my cart is a little gray icon on the top right, which I did not see.
I happened to be in a hurry at the time of purchase, and decided to abandon my cart. I bought the two routers at a local store and was on my way.
I definitely overlooked some things throughout the checkout process, but so do most users. Customers are impatient, and often if what they want is not right in front of them, they abandon the cart. Here are a couple things Circuit City could do that would have prevented my abandoned cart:
- Allow me to specify a quantity on the product page, when I first add the item to my cart.
- Make a “View Cart” or “Edit Cart” button that is in the same location throughout checkout in the main viewing area. I should not have to look above the navigation in the header for a cart icon. It should be right there next to my product with the other nice GREEN buttons.
- On every page in the checkout, the product name should always be hyperlinked back to the product. This has been the subject of numerous user studies, and customers like being able to go back and forth.
- When I add a product to my shopping cart, I should be able to edit my cart on the very next screen. That way, if I added the wrong product by mistake or want to edit the quantity I can instantly do so without having to click on another page.
Stay tuned for part 2 of this article, where we look at another large online retailer, and where things went wrong in their checkout process.
Posted in Web Development - 3 Comments
January 17th, 2007
Pingdom: A Great Little Web App
Although I work on the web, over the years there have been very few web applications that have truly become instrumental to the way we do business. Pingdom is certainly an exception.
Pingdom is a very simple service really. For a small monthly fee, they allow you to monitor a number of websites 24/7 and check for downtime or errors. Their monitoring servers will check your website any number of times, from once per minute to once per hour. Should it be down, you instantly get an email, and if you choose, an SMS text message on your cell phone. You also are notified when the server is back up.
Users can actually setup similar monitoring for mail servers as well using Pingdom. I find it to be a must-have for any website administrator, and it is great security for your clients to know that you are on top of their site.
A Fun Registration Process
I love studying checkout and registration processes, and I must say that signing up for Pingdom was an absolute pleasure. I started by signing up for their risk-free 30-day trial. It took maybe 60 seconds and there was no billing information required. Then I saw something I thought was really great. Following my sign-up confirmation, I was offered a one-time discount on the pricing if I were to make a purchase immediately. Being a sucker for a great bargain, I took advantage of their offer and bought a one year plan.
Following my purchase, I was immediately emailed new login information. I was able to login and setup all of my sites in less than 20 minutes, and have been absolutely thrilled with the application ever since. The administration area is very intuitive, and makes use of some very clever javascript throughout to keep things moving along rapidly.
All in all, Pingdom is a must-have in order for our company to continually provide clients with exceptional customer service. By all means, check it out today.
Posted in Software - 4 Comments
January 13th, 2007
[SHOWCASE] newsboys and Andy Andrews
We have been working very hard on some really great projects over the past few months, and are excited to be launching a number of sites early in 2007. I just wanted to take a moment and share two of them that were launched yesterday, January 12th.
newsboys
We originally did the design for newsboys.com back in 2006. They loved the design, but went through a couple of companies to develop the site and it did not work out for whatever reason. So, we got to code this design and it was a lot of fun. The newsboys do a lot of great interactive things on their site and have around 20,000 fans per day logging on to participate. We hope this is a really positive step for them in creating a functional, yet fun environment for their fans.
Andy Andrews
Andy and his team is very near and dear to Project83 from the very beginning, as we have been working with them for nearly three years. They have a great message, and completely trust our team to make their website beautiful, yet very easy to use.
This was a challenge from the beginning, as we decided to do a 3-column liquid (content scales with the browser window size) layout with fixed-width sidebars for the homepage. Without the help of some great resources, this layout may not have been possible. A few months and over 1,100 lines of CSS later, we had a great layout that looks fantastic across numerous browsers and platforms. We were very proud to launch this one yesterday.
I am looking forward to more frequent blogging efforts and some really interesting topics over the coming months, along with more exciting website launches. Stay tuned!
Posted in Showcase - 5 Comments