Usability & Design of Shopping Cart
When a shopping cart is developed, the main purpose of it is to generate sales. Hence, it is very important that the design would convert the users to buy from it. Internet users do not have patience. If they reached the site but feel lost, or feel that the site is not giving them a sense of security, they will leave straight away.
Usability
The easier the site navigation, the more chance that the user would stay on the site. Therefore, the site need to be designed with human in mind. Yes, SEO is important, but that doesn’t mean usability is not. In fact, they should both be considered when the site is designed.
In my experience, I always find that a site in this format works best:
The first component is the banner – which contains the logo (and make this the button to return to homepage) and an ad-banner of the latest offer / promotion. Then comes the horizontal menu. I usually would put informative links here, which contains information about the company, other services offered etc.
The vertical menu would contain the items of the shopping cart. It is recommended to make this a foldable menu, showing the categories only when loaded. (Remember to use unobstrusive JavaScript.)
The content occupies the most space as you do need to have a spacious layout for the content. If the design is too congested, they won’t get read – as the website does not look professional.
Apart from the layout, remember to make the ‘add to cart’ button prompt. Show clearly what is clickable and what is not. Confusion is a bad thing here. Show the discount / offer on every page – if you put them onto the homepage only, some people might not read it. They might went through the search engine and landed onto the product pages.
Persuasive Design
The next thing needed would be to make sure that the users are certainly going to buy from the website. When they have added something onto the cart, it is important not to let them go away. Hence, let’s talk about the conversion path here.
The rule of thumb is to limit the conversion path as much as possible. A general practice is three steps – add to cart, enter information, confirm. Don’t give too much options.
Another thing you can do is to remove as much links as possible during the conversion process.
The other thing is to provide as much information as possible. If they don’t understand the product, they would do the following:
- Ask you – which takes a long time
- Search for information on the internet – side tracked! And very likely they will find it on the competitors’ website
- Give up
On the other hand, the more information is given the better, as this would certainly please the search engine.
