Essential Elements of Shopping Cart Design for Every Ecommerce Website

By admin, September 22nd, 2011 | News, Tips And Tricks | 1 Comment

Essential Elements of Shopping Cart Design for Every Ecommerce Website

Shopping Cart Design

The availability of e-commerce facility has gained significant popularity in the last decade. What has attracted the user of online shopping is the convenience of shopping their favorite products from their home as well. Moreover, the user also has an advantage of more information on the desired product and an option to choose from a wide range, when buying online. A large number of software companies have come up with e- commerce software, which is primarily aimed to enhance the user experience on the e-commerce website as well as to provide a better platform to business entities to showcase their products.

There are a number of points; the companies must keep in mind while deciding the overall structure of their e-commerce website. One of the most important aspects of the same is the shopping cart. More often it has been observed that due to issues related to the shopping cart and check out glitches, the user is not able to buy the product. Following are some of the points an e-commerce web designer can introduce while designing the shopping cart.

1. The customers find it difficult to take quick decision on their choice of buy. They keep on checking repeatedly even if they have selected the product, which they intend to buy. You may consider including a small thumbnail image of the product in the shopping cart description. Including a small thumbnail image of the chosen product in the shopping cart will give your customer a satisfaction that they are checking out with the correct product and are not paying up for something else.

2. Avoid hiding any additional charges. The customer should be aware of all charges such as processing, packaging, shipping charges and taxes etc., much before they proceed with the payment. More often it has been observed that such charges appears at the last moment, which makes the customer nervous and not ending up making the payment.

3. Registering on the website is an issue, with which not all customers are comfortable. You should not insist that everyone should register before buying the product. You may keep it as an option and those who wish not to register should be able to buy the product with very minimal details which are must for processing and shipping.

4. While buying the product, the customer is not aware of the total check out process. Providing with a progress status message on your website could help in the decision making process of the customer. The typical example of a progress status could be in terms of number of steps such as ‘Step 1 of 5’, ‘Step 2 of 5’ etc. or in the form of % completion such as “20% complete”, “45% complete” etc.

5. The shopping cart icon linking to the shopping cart should be present on every page and preferable on a corner in the header or footer. It helps a customer in checking out, when he or she has finished shopping. In the absence of the icon on every page, the customer may have trouble locating the same and whatever time he has spent on your website in selecting product may go waste and you may end up losing the valuable customer.

6. In the end you should provide a short summary of your product so that your customer is sure about the product he is buying. The summary may include a small thumbnail, name and cost of the product, other charges such as taxes, packaging and shipping charges etc. All these details should be available to the customer before proceeding for payment.

7. These are the days of internet frauds. You should be very choosy with your payment gateway. Prefer the gateway, which is the most secured and uses latest encryption technology so that your customers do not have second thoughts on using their credit card. You should also check on the history and the credibility of the payment gateway you are selecting.

Author bio

Rebecca is a writer and a blogger. She is very fond of cooking and writing. She loves to write articles on future technology. She recently started her article on notebook computers, which are her recent interest.

Essential Elements of Shopping Cart Design for Every Ecommerce Website

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