I had a strange experience yesterday that I thought I would share. I visited one of my favorite retail stores, Apple (Note: A distant 2nd to Starbucks). Anyway, it was late in the evening and I needed to quickly purchase a power adapter replacement. Immediately upon entering the store, I immediately noticed a few things:

The Checkout Process

1. The genius bar. This is the area where you can sign-up and receive technical support from one of the Apple ‘geniuses’. The store was recently remodeled and the genius bar was moved to a location front-and-center to the doorway. Love the Apple geniuses, but I didn’t need them today.

2. The window shoppers. There were tons of people roaming about the store, ‘kicking the tires’ on all of the cool Apple products. I couldn’t tell if any of them were buying anything, but they didn’t seem to be waiting for assistance.

3. The employees. I noticed that all of the Apple employees were busy chatting with the window shoppers and asking if they had questions about the products.

Since I knew exactly what I wanted, I marched to the product area, grabbed the power adapter, opened my wallet and prepared to make the purchase. That’s when it struck me. Where’s the line? I looked around the store for the checkout line for what seemed like 5 minutes. Then, I got lucky and flagged down one of the employees, who happened to be in transit to the back of the store. I received the “one minute” finger (the one your mom gives you when she doesn’t have time to deal with your mess). So, I graciously waited … and waited … and waited … with my credit card in hand.

Then, I noticed someone appearing to be picking up a shipment flagged down the ‘one-finger employee’. Yes, I was mad. The employee spent about 10 minutes retrieving the customer’s items from the back of the store, asking the customer to sign a stack of paperwork, then instructing the customer to wait to actually make the purchase. I overheard the employee telling the customer that I’d already asked for checkout service. I immediately thought “at least she didn’t forget about me.” I calmed down … a bit.

At this point, both the shipment-pickup customer and myself are standing in the middle of the floor waiting … and waiting … and bonding over the fact that there is no checkout line. We both notice our Apple employee asking their coworker to help us checkout “when they got an opportunity”, but the other employee responded with a shrug, as if to say “I don’t have time for all of that, I’m helping people.” Sigh.

Our Apple employee disappeared to the back of the store. I briefly considered eBay or another store, but really needed this power adapter immediately and it was late in the day. We both looked around desperately for help. Who will take our money!? It felt weird. The geniuses were busy providing technical support. All other Apple employees were busy answering questions and selling stuff to the window shoppers. So we continued to wait. That’s when we noticed an Apple employee actually taking money from a customer. OMG! We both hovered around (stalked, shadowed) the lucky customer that actually found a way to make a purchase. When their checkout process was complete, the employee actually tried to escape us, but we made him take our money.

True story.

Don’t underestimate the ‘quick sale’. When developing the checkout process for your website, be sure that you don’t slow down the process with extraneous information and functions unrelated to processing payments. A quick checkout is also a way to provide great customer service. Not all customers are as patient as the shipment pickup guy and me.

TIPS:

1. Place your related products/up-selling content areas on the pages were the user makes the decision to purchase. Don’t interrupt the checkout process with up-selling activities.
2. Separate your customer service areas from the checkout process.
3. The process for making a purchase should be clear and immediately obvious.
4. Once a customer has decided to make the purchase (added the item to their cart) and have indicated that they are ready to checkout, start the process IMMEDIATELY.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Tips for Improving the Online Shopping Experience

If you have an online store, you don’t want to lose customers due to an ineffective online shopping interface. Here are 20 tips for improving your customer’s experience while shopping in your online store.

FINDING A PRODUCT

1. Categories – If your online store sells many types of products, organize your products into relevant categories. The categories should be labeled using the language most likely used by your customers. Also, dedicate a navigation area for the categories selected.

2. Subcategories – Utilize subcategories to group a large number of products into manageable categories (ex: Main Product Category: Books, Product Subcategory: Fiction, Non-Fiction).

3. Open-Ended Search – Include an open-ended search area for customers to type in keywords for finding products.

4. Guided Search – Design a search form that allows your customers to search for products by the most searched-on characteristics (Product Name, Price Range, Product Category etc.)

REVIEWING PRODUCTS

5. Zoomable Product Photos – Using zoomable/resizable photos of your products will allow online shoppers to review the product closely. This may reduce the customer’s aversion to making an online purchase.

6. Color Swatches – If applicable, including color swatches of available colors & patterns can reduce the number of “clicks” the customer has to make to review all of the available color options.

7. Multiple Picture Angles – Photograph items from multiple angles to allow the customer to obtain a complete view. This will improve their ability to make the purchase, as it reduces the number of unknowns (ex: “I wish I could see the back of the item”).

8. Related Products – Providing links to related or coordinating items will allow your customers to quickly select coordinating/related items, as well as improve your sales.

9. Item Details – Always display item details such as weight, color, dimensions in a designated (consistent) and easily identifiable area. This will highlight the relevant details, as well as reduce any misunderstandings related to item characteristics (ex: “The item looked much larger on the internet”).

SELECTING PRODUCTS FOR PURCHASE

10. Shopping cart – Utilize a shopping cart to allow your customers to “gather” and manage their purchases. This is the area where items are collected PRIOR to checkout. This encourages multiple item purchases. The shopping experience in an online store is similar to offline shopping. If you shopped in a store carrying a hand basket, you will most likely purchase a lot less items than you would if you had a shopping cart.

11. Cart Details – Ensure that all necessary details regarding the product are included on the cart page. This includes details such as original price, discounted price, quantity size etc. This will positively influence your store’s credibility (and customer trust) during the purchasing process.

12. Cart Management – Allow your customers to manage the items in their cart by including the ability to remove products and change ordering quantities. You don’t want to lose a customer that only wanted to remove one of four items in their cart, but became frustrated and confused about how to do it.

THE CHECKOUT PROCESS

13. Acceptable Forms of Payment – Ensure that you’re accepting the most popular forms of payment used by your customers (credit card types, PayPal, echeck etc.).

14. Security – ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS ensure that your customers are entering their payment information on a secure (SSL/https) page.

15. Required Data Input Items – Identify required data elements using bold fonts or an asterisk. Be sure to indicate at the very top of the checkout form how the customer should identify the items required for successful checkout (ex: credit card information, billing address etc.).

16. List Boxes – Use list boxes to reduce data entry error for data fields such as state or country.

17. Confirmation Page – Always display a confirmation page that allows the customer to review their order and payment details prior to completing the purchase.

18. User Friendly Error Messages – Display user friendly error messages in the event that the payment can not be processed (ex: “An invalid credit card expiration date was entered.”)

AFTER THE PURCHASE

19. Web and Email Receipts – After successful payment processing, always take the customer to an online receipt page that details the order and confirms that their payment was successful. Also send an email receipt to the customer. If the customer closes their browser window prior to receiving purchase confirmation, the email receipt will serve as their backup receipt.

20. Branding – Include your logo, site name and site address on all correspondence with the customer. This assists in branding your site as a credible online business.

Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

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Hosted vs. Licensed Shopping Carts

If your website requires a shopping cart function, there are two basic types of shopping cart solutions available. Hosted shopping carts allow you to integrate a shopping cart with your websites e-commerce function, but the cart itself is hosted and maintained on the shopping cart vendors’ server. Licensed shopping cart solutions are purchased or obtained from a vendor, but customized by you (or your developer) and maintained on your web hosting server. You would generally purchase a license shopping cart, but there are a few free, open source solutions available as well. Your decision to select a licensed or hosted cart should be dependent on your business type, your budget and the technical resources available to you.

Pros and cons of Hosted vs. Licensed shopping carts

Hosted shopping carts

Pros:

• Maintenance free solution. The hosting company is responsible for server backups, server/application maintenance, upgrades and troubleshooting.
• Generally quick to setup (depending on the # of products)
• Hosting solution will include ecommerce web hosting

Cons:

• Hosted solutions generally incur monthly fees ($9.99/month and up depending on provider)
• Generally not as flexible if complex customizations are needed.
• With some hosted carts, your customers will be transferred to another domain for payment processing.

Examples of Hosted Shopping Cart Providers:

• Paypal Website Pro
• Homestead Storefront
• 1ShoppingCart
• 2Checkout

IMPORTANT: Shopping carts provide the interface for customers to select/update the items they wish to purchase. The shopping cart transfers the ordering details to the payment gateway when the customer is ready to CHECKOUT.

Licensed shopping carts:

Buy your own cart and custom to your specifications

Pros:

• No monthly fees for hosting the cart (generally)
• Highly customizable layouts
• Greater Flexibility in altering features/functionality and integrating 3^rd party tools

Cons:

• Requires higher upfront costs (fee to purchase the cart + license, SSL certificate, costs to customize/setup the cart to work on your website)
• Requires technical expertise to setup and integrate with existing website and database(s)
• Web hosting solution (operating system) will determine the shopping carts that can run on your web server.
• Requires technical expertise to troubleshoot if problems occur.
• Technical support may not be readily available for open source, free carts.

Examples of Licensed Shopping Cart Providers:

• WebAssist eCart
• ProductCart
• ZenCart
• Miva Merchant

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Kishau Rogers

Kishau Rogers is the President and Founder of Websmith Group, a web application development company. Her mission is to connect businesses with the information and technologies necessary to meet their goals EFFECTIVELY. Kishau Rogers holds a Computer Science Degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and has over sixteen years of experience, which includes web, application and database development. Kishau also speaks, blogs, and writes articles to educate organizations and entrepreneurs on resources and best practices for ensuring effective, dynamic and innovation web solutions.

Website - Twitter - More Posts

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