Shopping Carts: 5 Usability Problems

The usability of a shopping cart refers to the efficiency with which a user can achieve their goals on a website. Many of the larger online shopping carts, like Play.com and Amazon.com, are continuously striving to make their buying process as fluent and as effortless as possible. Knowing you can buy a book or film in just 3 or 4 clicks encourages you to return to the same, reliable website.

Having read numerous articles and white papers dedicated to best practice shopping cart design and usability; below I have highlighted five potential design problems in shopping carts that I'm sure many users have encountered.

1. Shopping carts that ask a user to register before knowing if the product is available or not.

It could be quite irritating for a user if they have spent 10 minutes entering their credit card details, home address, telephone number etc etc. only to find out during the checkout process that the product they want to buy is out of stock.

Many shopping carts enable you to present users with live stock availability before the user places their product in the shopping cart.

2. Suggesting the user buys similar products before adding the main product to the shopping cart.

It's often helpful when a website recommends additional products you may want or need after adding your main product to your shopping cart.

However, I think you'll agree that it could be slightly confusing if these additional products were offered to you before even adding the main product to your shopping cart? You press "Add to Cart" and suddenly you're offered batteries, or insoles or travel cases. Many users would be left feeling confused, wondering if their product had been added or not, or if they'd pressed the wrong button.

Best practice guidelines would indicate offering your user the extra products after the user has finished shopping and they're entering the checkout process.

3. Shopping carts that ask a user to register before they have even added a product to their shopping cart.

Asking for a user's personal information before they have even added a product to their shopping cart is not a good move.

Customer registration can offer some big advantages to you as a merchant including recovery for abandoned shopping carts, customer loyalty and email contact. However, many users may be browsing a number of websites, adding products to numerous shopping carts for the main purpose of comparing prices and features. If a user has to register personal details before using the shopping carts, a large percentage are likely to abandon the website.

4. Requiring a user to delete and add the same product to shopping carts just so they can change its colour, size or variation.

Editing a shopping cart should be as simple as possible and shouldn't require the user to delete anything from the shopping cart.

If a product comes in different colours and different sizes don't make them delete it from their shopping cart if they want it in a different variation. Users should be able to select from within their shopping carts the different options.

5. Websites that do not clearly show the user the contents of the shopping carts.

Have you ever been on a website and added the same product to your shopping cart 3 or 4 times because you're not sure if it worked the first time?

Many users that can't see the contents of their shopping cart in the same browser as the one they are shopping on can often feel confused about whether or not their item has been added successfully.

As a merchant it is understandable that you don't want to take your user away from the page they are shopping on every time they add something to their shopping cart. Best practice guidelines therefore indicate displaying the contents of a users shopping cart in the same browser, in the right hand corner for example.

To summarise, the design of the entire shopping experience is of utmost importance. These 5 potential design problems highlighted are five of many common problems found on shopping carts.

Importance Of An Ecommerce Shopping Cart

Since the rapid growth of the internet over the last few years, particularly as a commercial device, the growth of what has come to be known as ecommerce has been cemented by the importance of achieving conversions online. From this, the importance of a good ecommerce shopping cart has become further recognised by businesses both small and large, which has led to an increasing number of competing applications on the market. But what is it that makes an ecommerce shopping facility important to the business model, and what are the benefits of having a ecommerce shopping cart integrated within your website?

The Internet, as much as it is a highly profitable arena for both online and predominantly offline businesses, is also a very competitive domain. There are literally billions of sites out there competing to attract traffic and sales. Traffic gives the potential for earnings online – if no one sees your site, no one can buy. Some sites will do quite well at attracting traffic and will spend heavily on search engine optimisation and advertising, but won't convert the sales meaning they are absolutely worthless. As part of converting sales, it is important to have an ecommerce shopping cart that is both easy to navigate and flexible enough to cater for the needs of your customer. If your site lacks a shopping cart, it's going to be harder to convert your website traffic into sales. By placing any obstacles in the way of your customer, you are reducing the chances of a conversion, hence the importance of including a shopping cart within your site.

The importance of an ecommerce shopping cart may be obvious as far as some websites are concerned, but what about so called 'brochure' sites? Can they benefit from having a shopping cart integrated within their site? Many brochure sites aim for the high-end professional look, and feel that integrating a shopping cart within their site will devalue the branding they've worked so hard to achieve. In fact, this can have quite the opposite effect on your brand, and can provide your customers with a direct route to paying you money. Whether as a deposit or an upfront fee, any company can benefit from having an ecommerce facility integrated within their website. Again, by presenting customers the opportunity to pay, you can increase conversion rates from your traffic. When visitors have to go out of their way to pay, they are less likely to use your service, or to pay you promptly than if payment is made a basic and straightforward process.

Having an ecommerce facility within your website is of critical importance in strengthening conversion rates and making for easy payment. Those without an ecommerce shopping cart will be left in the wake of their competitors in what is already a tough environment, and will find accepting payment from online customers more problematic and expensive. By ensuring your site boasts a sophisticated and user-friendly ecommerce shopping cart, you can remain competitive online whilst promoting quick and effective payment to maintain positive cash flow.