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Tips On Creating A User-Friendly E-Commerce Shopping Cart (Part 1)

The shopping cart is an essential feature of eCommerce websites. Unfortunately, many companies fail to recognize how severely this feature can affect their business. They think the basics are fine, because hey, it’s just a shopping cart, right? Wrong! There are many issues which could persuade customers to abandon their carts, a serious problem in the world of e-commerce. These issues need to be addressed for your shopping cart to be as user friendly as possible. Not sure what we’re talking about? Take a look at these great tips to gain a better understanding of what we mean.

Make It Easy To View Items

You should make it as easy as possible to view the items a customer has already placed in their cart. Many sites feature a roll over feature which allows customers to view their items as a drop down list on every page of the store. This helps your customers to keep track of what they have already put in their cart, how much money they have spent, and more.

Make It Simple To Change/Edit Cart

People change their mind all of the time. Maybe they see a shirt they like better then the one they have already added to their cart, or perhaps just realized they spent a little too much money for their budget. For this reason, a shopping cart needs to be simple to edit or change. No one wants to jump through hoops, so don’t make them. You can lose a lot of sales that way.

Highlight Your Security Features

Buying online can make people nervous. What if someone gets my credit card information, or what if this site isn’t one hundred percent secure? Ease their worries by highlighting your security features. Been approved by a well trusted security site? Have a security system in place for your customers that can protect them from credit fraud? Highlight that on every page, but especially the checkout pages themselves.

Shorten The Checkout Process

People can get frustrated if they have to go through what seems like a thousand steps, just to purchase something. They want to get on with their lives, not sit in front of a computer entering a ton of data. In fact, the longer your checkout process is, the less likely customers are to follow through with their orders. Fix this by shortening the checkout process as much as possible. Yes, there is information you have to get from a customer, but keep it to that and no more.

Conclusion

Never underestimate the power of the checkout process and shopping cart. Making small changes towards being more user friendly can make a really big difference in the number of sales you receive and the level of customer satisfaction. Just ensure you make it easy to view items, simplify changing the cart, highlight your security features, and shorten the checkout process. Do these few simple steps to quickly make your shopping cart more user friendly.