Checking Out

As I’ve written before, I’m always surprised how many people hire me to build a store but still have very little personal experience with on-line shopping. Maybe that is unfair. Perhaps they do have experience, but haven’t really thought about their experience; particularly during the all-important Check Out process.

When building a Shopping Cart, there’s a tendency to concentrate on ‘the products’ and not that final step where you actually get paid. But in many ways, the Check Out process–where visitors decide how to pay and make that commitment–is critical to closing the deal. Study after study has shown that if it’s not smooth as silk, people will often back away. It says something about your credibility and will scare off all but the most engaged visitors.

Now there are literally thousands of pre-built shopping cart systems on the market, ranging in price from ‘free’ to ‘you must be joking’. And they all require that you choose a payment processing system eg. credit cards, Paypal, etc. We’ll get into some details later but for now here’s some fun, free advice:

Go on a shopping trip. You should buy a few things on Paypal and Amazon and any other sites that vaguely resemble the kinds of things you want to sell. If you haven’t used Paypal in a while, try it now as it has changed. Really analyze the check outs, keeping in mind which features will map to what you want to do. Once you do that you should have good sense of the ‘flow’. Some sites make it easy to select multiple products. Some are better at a single impulse-buy. Some offer flexible shipping options. Decide which features matter to you.

After you hit the ‘Submit’ button, then look at the receipts they give you and the follow-up e-mails. Do they provide immediate tracking information? Apart from the details, how does the Check Out process make you feel about what they do? Do their actions during their Check Out inspire confidence or do they make you feel sort of like you just threw the dice?

Once you’ve done your analysis, then we can decide which type of cart and processing system will best fit your needs.