The process leading up to a transaction online is possibly the most critical to a shopping cart’s success. If the buying process causes frustration, confusion or insecurity, the user is likely to abandon the shopping cart, never to return again.

The usability of a shopping cart refers to the efficiency with which a user can achieve their goals on a website. Many of the larger online shopping carts, like Play.com and Amazon.com, are continuously striving to make their buying process as fluent and as effortless as possible. Knowing you can buy a book or film in just 3 or 4 clicks encourages you to return to the same, reliable website.

Having read numerous articles and white papers dedicated to best practice shopping cart design and usability; below I have highlighted five potential design problems in shopping carts that I’m sure many users have encountered.

1. Shopping carts that ask a user to register before knowing if the product is available or not.

It could be quite irritating for a user if they have spent 10 minutes entering their credit card details, home address, telephone number etc etc. only to find out during the checkout process that the product they want to buy is out of stock.

Many shopping carts enable you to present users with live stock availability before the user places their product in the shopping cart.

2. Suggesting the user buys similar products before adding the main product to the shopping cart.

It’s often helpful when a website recommends additional products you may want or need after adding your main product to your shopping cart.

However, I think you’ll agree that it could be slightly confusing if these additional products were offered to you before even adding the main product to your shopping cart? You press “Add to Cart” and suddenly you’re offered batteries, or insoles or travel cases. Many users would be left feeling confused, wondering if their product had been added or not, or if they’d pressed the wrong button.

Best practice guidelines would indicate offering your user the extra products after the user has finished shopping and they’re entering the checkout process.

3. Shopping carts that ask a user to register before they have even added a product to their shopping cart.

Asking for a user’s personal information before they have even added a product to their shopping cart is not a good move.

Customer registration can offer some big advantages to you as a merchant including recovery for abandoned shopping carts, customer loyalty and email contact. However, many users may be browsing a number of websites, adding products to numerous shopping carts for the main purpose of comparing prices and features. If a user has to register personal details before using the shopping carts, a large percentage are likely to abandon the website.

4. Requiring a user to delete and add the same product to shopping carts just so they can change its colour, size or variation.

Editing a shopping cart should be as simple as possible and shouldn’t require the user to delete anything from the shopping cart.

If a product comes in different colours and different sizes don’t make them delete it from their shopping cart if they want it in a different variation. Users should be able to select from within their shopping carts the different options.

5. Websites that do not clearly show the user the contents of the shopping carts.

Have you ever been on a website and added the same product to your shopping cart 3 or 4 times because you’re not sure if it worked the first time?

Many users that can’t see the contents of their shopping cart in the same browser as the one they are shopping on can often feel confused about whether or not their item has been added successfully.

As a merchant it is understandable that you don’t want to take your user away from the page they are shopping on every time they add something to their shopping cart. Best practice guidelines therefore indicate displaying the contents of a users shopping cart in the same browser, in the right hand corner for example.

To summarise, the design of the entire shopping experience is of utmost importance. These 5 potential design problems highlighted are five of many common problems found on shopping carts.

Which one is most likely to make you abandon your shopping cart?

Tell us about additional usability problems you have encountered!

Which, out of those above, do you think is the most irritating and the most likely to cause shopping abandonment?

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Running a store is hard work. You need to get the store built, enter your products, test the site for security, find potential customers, entice them to purchase, and fulfill their orders. This book aims to make your task a little bit easier and hopefully even show you some great techniques that will help make the Internet work for you. These techniques are applicable to all stores built with Zen Cart whether you are a new e-tailer just starting out, a traditional store with retail outlets looki

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The Shopping Cart Software You want to shop for a week’s supply at Walmart and as you enter the store, you notice that all the shopping carts are gone. How would you feel? Of course, you’d feel like not shopping at all and switch to other stores where shopping carts are available. The same applies for online shoppers who wanted to make a more organized and one-way shopping, most especially if they’d purchase multiple items. A customer would always want it the easy way out and one way of letting them shop the easy way is through online shopping carts. Shopping cart software has improved a lot as years passed and as e-commerce boomed to overcome a lot of tangible business out in the business world. Having an Online Shopping Cart Software is important and will reap you a lot of benefits both in short term and in the long run. Through a shopping cart, you would be able to cater the best shopping experience to your online customers like they’re in a virtual shopping mall picking up what they want and stashing it inside the cart for the cashier to bill them out. Free vs Paid Shopping Carts There are a lot of shopping cart softwares available; most of them are pay-to-use while some few are for free. Free shopping cart softwares may be very tempting to avail of because they are absolutely free of charge. Take note, however, that these free shopping cart softwares may be a good option while starting a business, when the customers are not that overwhelming yet. But try to anticipate when your business made it into the main stream. Surely, the free shopping cart software won’t be able to handle the demands of multiple customers in the long run. As compared with paid shopping carts, free carts are less stable and have less customer support available for technical difficulties. Multi-Tasking Carts There are available shopping cart softwares which come in a package making them more versatile than ever. Shopping cart packages allow for the users to perform multiple tasks at once. Suggestive carts- Aside from the usual shopping cart where all the items to be purchased are stored temporarily, current carts also generate information about the customer’s history of previous purchases and offers them similar products which could catch their interests- this is through the power of cookies which collect previous information of users and dig them up for future use. Search Tool- Search tool is also integrated in some shopping carts so shoppers won’t need to scour over the list of items. They can also sort these items out so that they can compare the prices, and all other essential information. Cross Selling- Some carts can also be designed to do cross-selling such that there would be Hot Listed Items on a part of the cart which could raise the interest of a customer. Computations of Fees- One important feature of a shopping cart is to make the job of the online seller easier so that before it reaches the Internet Merchant Account service, everything is already ironed out and ready for billing. Computation of taxes, shipping costs, discount rates and all other necessary calculations can be done by a shopping cart and this helps a lot in making the transaction smoother and more convenient. Reporting- A shopping carts task doesn’t just end once the customer leaves the site and billed out by the IMA. The cart should also display reports to the online seller about the hottest items on the list, the overall sale for a certain time, the information about the traffic, the type of customers and all essential information necessary to improve the store. Customizability of Design The flexibility of the shopping carts is important so that it could be well adapted and customized according to the design or layout of the online store for which it is designed to work. By this feature, you can easily change the look of your store if it starts out to feel dull and monotonous. You should also see to it that the interface is user-friendly so that those persons with no idea about HTML or web designing can easily tweak the design up. There are also some shopping cart software providers who can customize the carts for you- all you need is to give them a logo of your store or tell them how you want those shopping carts to look like. Shopping carts are very vital in the functioning of an ecommerce website. It gives heaps of benefits for both the seller and the customer. For this reason, be very careful and strategic in choosing the right shopping cart for your store. Just bear in mind those tips and points which should be looked into and surely, you’ll get the best shopping cart service suited for your business.

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Are you looking for the best foreign online pharmacies online? What are you waiting for; when Mexican pharmacies are open to your online attendance? It is rather a miracle for those who wish to buy the Latin prescriptions online. Now, a Mexican pharmacy online purchase can be made online. Mexican pharmacies have made various prescription meds online. Now, you can buy these prescription meds online from Mexican pharmacies online.

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Diflucan online pharmacy is also a Mexican pharmacy online that has made available all the useful drugs which were not available online before easily with high quality. Nexium pharmacy online is the one place which is one of the best Mexican pharmacies which are online round the clock so that the whole world can have an opportunity to buy medications of valuable standard and repute. Nexium pharmacy online being one of the best Mexican pharmacies offers a wide range of online meds. Incredibly, now you can buy plavix from nexium pharmacy online. Nexium pharmacy online offers best meds at cheap prices. Nexium online pharmacy provides reliable drugs at low prices. Nexium pharmacy online has made it possible for the whole world to buy Latin meds online easily.

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It’s that time again to pay your credit card bill, so you head over to your company’s website and as you begin scanning your credit card statement, you are shocked to see three unauthorized charges. Fortunately, they are small amounts and are easy to get credits issued by the company. However, it is unquestionably a wake-up call for you to pay more attention when you are making online purchases so that you do not become a victim of Internet fraud.

A record .1 billion was spent in 2004 for online consumer spending. More and more people are attracted to the ease of online shopping and are spending greater amounts. Unfortunately, the probability of becoming a casualty of Internet fraud is also escalating. The Internet National Fraud Center Watch declared that the typical loss to fraud victims for just the first half of 2005 was ,579. This is compared to the 5 average for all of 2004. Complaints relating to general goods purchases (merchandise never received or misrepresented) accounted for 30% of Internet fraud complaints, and auction purchases headed the list at 44%.

While many e-commerce websites are trustworthy and have taken the necessary safety measures to protect you, it never hurts to always be careful. If you have decided to make an online purchase, you might think about these ten simple rules:

1. Always avoid using an ATM or debit card. Use only one credit card, preferably with a low credit limit, when making online purchases.

2. Always be wary of unsolicited offers by sellers. The Internet National Fraud Information Center Watch reported that email, as a method of contact by Internet scammers was up 22% in 2004. While the offer might be legitimate, spammers like to use this tactic to side-step reputable sites that provide consumer protection for online purchases.

3. Always use only reputable e-commerce websites that list their street address and telephone number in case you need to get in touch with them directly.

4. Always read the websites privacy policy. Some websites may reserve the right to sell/give your information to a third party. Check the document to see if they allow an opportunity to opt-out of receiving special offers from third-party vendors or for permission to share your personal information.

5. Always check for a lock symbol in the status bar at the bottom of your Web browser window. Also, do not provide your personal information if the website address does not start with https (a sign that the website is using a secure server).

6. Always choose only verified sellers. Check to see if the vendor is a verified member of a reputable third party such as the Better Business Bureau, VeriSign, or Guardian eCommerce. These third-party sites help to ensure online consumers will be protected when shopping or conducting e-commerce transactions.

7. Always check that the delivery date posted is reasonable. If you have not dealt with the vendor on a regular basis, be cautious of any website that states the shipment will be delayed 20 days or more. Delivery dates of 7-10 days are more common.

8. Always keep a paper trail of all online transactions. Print out a hard copy of the transaction and keep it in a file for future reference.

9. Always be cautious of website offers that just sound too good to be true. The Internet is littered with get rich quick scams and false advertising claims. Investigate all claims thoroughly before proceeding.

10. Always contact your states Department of Consumer Affairs for further assistance if you do not receive what you paid for, and the vendor will not return your emails or calls.

These common sense rules about online purchases will eventually become second nature as you continue to use the Internet. They can also save you untold anguish and alarm when you discover that you have been billed for purchases that were never authorized.

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