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Tips On Creating A User-Friendly Shopping Cart (Part 2)

A shopping cart is a vital yet often overlooked feature of e-commerce websites. Many companies believe just slapping together a very basic cart is going to be fine, no matter what it ends up being. While ‘sticking to the basics’ can be great, this doesn’t tend to work well. Customers have many complaints about the shopping cart and checkout experience, and in order to make the process user-friendly these complaints need to be addressed. In a previous article, you were given a few tips on how you can create a more user-friendly shopping cart. Today you can read on to find out a few more ways you can make your customer’s happy with this feature.

Answer Questions Upfront

Customers tend to have a lot of questions about the checkout process and what comes after. How long is it going to take for delivery? How much is shipping going to cost? What payment methods do you accept? Why isn’t something working and what can I do about it? Answer these questions on the most appropriate page of your checkout process. Unanswered questions are a huge contributor to the massive amount of abandoned carts. By answering these questions, you increase the chances that someone will follow through with their purchase.

Don’t Force People to Sign Up

Instead of forcing people to create an account for your eCommerce store prior to checking out, give them the option to checkout as a guest. Many people don’t want to receive the bulk emails associated with signing up, while others simply don’t have the time to do it at that very moment. Giving them the option both increases the chances that they will finish checking out, and greatly improves customer satisfaction levels.

Prompt People Before They Leave

Prompt people with items in their shopping cart before they leave your site. Sometimes they’ve decided they really don’t want their items, but giving them a second chance might help a few people decide they want the items after all. Prompting can also help customers who forget they have added an item that they still need to finish checking out before leaving.

Ditch The Fancy Stuff

With shopping carts, there is no need to get fancy. Decorative texts, fanciful designs, excessive media… it is all unnecessary. Also unnecessary are a ton of special features that just take up more of your customer’s time. Stick to the basics and your shopping cart will do better. This does not mean you should use a ‘basic’ shopping cart, but rather that it is unnecessary to add a bunch of unnecessary junk.

Conclusion
Failing to recognize the impact your shopping cart can have on your eCommerce site is a big mistake. By utilizing the above tips you can create a solution to the problems many customers have with their general checkout experiences. Just remember that in order to create a user-friendly shopping cart for your e-commerce site you need to answer questions upfront, don’t force people to sign up for your site, prompt people before they leave, and ditch the fancy stuff.