[Sigia-l] Shopping Basket

[Nancy Tomaro]

Frequent lurker, first time poster. 

I've enjoyed reading all the feedback. My job is ecommerce sites so, selfishly, getting other's insight is very useful to me as well. 

Without knowing the details of the client, the products, the customer base, it's hard to give feedback on why persistent cart (layer in header as you're describing) would or would not work in lieu of a shopping cart page. 

What I can share with you is some general reasoning as to why there is a shopping cart pages. 
1. Large % of shoppers tend to use the shopping cart as their "wish list". They'll add items to cart, leave and come back later and make purchases. Having said that, no reason a persistent cart couldn't work, just note you'd want to ensure it's cookied for some length of time (30, 60, 90 days depending again on product type, turn-over, internal biz rules)
2. Shipping charges are one of the top reasons customer's abandon cart/purchase. Smart sites clearly call out ALL charges involved in the order (even if at the cart state it's estimated) so there are no "surprises" as a customer works their way through checkout. Again, if a site can't accurately estimate shipping b/c costs are based on zip code (info collected once they're in checkout), good sites will use a zip code lookup in the cart to allow a customer to "estimate your shipping costs" (i.e. they know what they're getting into before they get into the checkout funnel)
3. Not sure this will ever change but customer's are still hesitant about online shopping. They want to know their purchase is safe and secure, what happens if they need to return a product? Who can they call if they have questions. Shopping cart is a great place to call out return policy, links to privacy policy, links to customer service phone number (or even link to chat), safety and security logos, etc. 
4. Will this client offer gift message/gift wrap? Even if it's available to add to the product on the PDP (product details page), traditionally shopping cart is a place a customer can choose those options (although, again, can be handled in checkout as well)
5. Ability to edit product/remove product. A lot of our sites do use a persistent cart that has this functionality so if your persistent cart would allow them to do that, you would be addressing this concern. 
6. What about the upsells? (sorry, I work ecomm). Many sites will use the shopping cart to sell that final upsell. Need a warranty to go with that watch? Or the belt to go with those shoes? A lot of ecomm platforms offer upsell products in the shopping cart for additional sales before starting checkout. 

I'd be curious to see/hear what your checkout flow is going to look like. Multi-step? Single page? UI presentation? Etc. There's alllll sorts of debates and  back and forth on "the best checkout" that continues to rage on (in a good way, of course :) ) but I understand client confidentiality. 

Having shared this, again, these responses have me thinking a bit about how to make the type of interaction you're describing work well, in the right circumstances, for the right customer, product and customer base. 

A few folks already mentioned this but testing, testing, testing....couldn't agree more. Testing pre-launch, A/B testing post-launch...test and see. 

Just a couple of the sites I peruse to stay on top of research around ecomm: 
Forrester 
http://econsultancy.com/us/blog
http://www.getelastic.com/
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/

Good luck!

n



Nancy Tomaro, CUA  |   Senior User Experience Designer    |   Tel 415.865.8510   |   Fax 415.896.1030
________________________________________________________________________________

Fry, Inc.  301 Howard St. Suite 1300,  San Francisco, , CA 94105   |    a MICROS-Retail company
Follow us on Twitter:  @microsretail and @fryinc  |  Read our blog: blog.fry.com http://blog.fry.com/




-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Louise Hewitt
Sent: Friday, January 14, 2011 3:03 AM
To: SIGIA-L
Subject: [Sigia-l] Shopping Basket

Hi List,

I need help thinking.

I have inherited a high-profile ecom project, and the solution has been designed so that there is no dedicated page for the shopping basket content (the basket can only be viewed in an auxillary 'flap' that layers over the page content anchored and triggered from an icon in the header.

The abscence of a dedicated page to 'view your basket' is making me edgy. I'm not super-experience with e-com design, so I'm hoping there are some experts out there who have been through this before and can help:

1 - is there an obvious bear trap in not including a dedicated cart-view page?
2 - has anyone got anecdotal or concrete evidence of user acceptance of overlay cart views?
3 - anything else that you think might come and bite my behind.

Cheers all, hoping that you all say - 'Wowser, what a great way to do ecom', but fearing you won't.

Lou
-------------------------------------------------------

UX / IA / content strategy

louise.hewitt at gmail.com

+ 44 (0) 7595 829647

louisehewitt.co.uk

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CUT SCISSORS GO! Ltd.
Reg no. 07192709 (England and Wales)
25 Brightland Road, Eastbourne, BN20 8BG



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