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January 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.

Circuit City Screenshot

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?

Circuit City Screenshot

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.

Circuit City Screenshot

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:

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

Valerie — February 21st, 2007

hmmm…sounds like OUR site as well! haha! Sometimes, even when a customer sees the “update quantities” tab, it still doesn’t connect that they put the new number in, and click it….funny…

Project83 Weblog: Commentary on web development, standards and small business » Blog Archive » Shopping Cart Frustration (part 2 of 2) — March 7th, 2007

[...] In part one of this brief series, I talked about an experience I had recently attempting to make a purchase from CircuitCity.com. Today I am going after another major merchant for some frustrating shopping cart practices. This article will be focusing on Buy.com. [...]

shopping cart — April 30th, 2008

Hi

It is a very nice and great post and I like it.

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