What makes a useable shopping cart and easy form entry.

The user interface criteria for shopping carts and forms are pretty much the same. For brevity, we’ll look at the shopping cart and conclude with a brief discussion on form entry.

No matter how great the service or product, your website shopping cart can create happy customers or have them running from you with a mere click. Shopping cart abandonment occurs primarily because the shopper doesn’t know how to complete a transaction. As a business website owner, focus your concern on the functionality of your shopping cart. (Leave the design details to the web designer.) A useable shopping cart must have these features if you want keep customers:

• Easily understood
• User friendly
• All charges clearly listed
• Merchant account provider prominently specified
  
  

What’s an ‘easily understood’ shopping cart? The answer can be different to different people. The basics are that the shopping cart should be easy to find on the website, how to add and remove items, and how to review all items and charges before hitting the ‘buy’ button.

A ‘user friendly’ shopping cart means all of the above in addition to being easy for the shopper to change information. For example, suppose I want to change my shipping address. I hit my browser’s ‘back’ button assuming I can just make my changes. I find that I must now reenter all information, not only the information I want to change. Some shopping carts display an ‘edit’ button to change information, but one can’t assume the customer will use it.

‘All charges clearly listed’ means just that – charges for products purchased as well as sales tax and shipping charges. Let shoppers know the full amount of the purchase before they submit credit card information and place the order. Don’t let valued customers wait for their credit card statements to figure out how much they were charged for tax and shipping.

Let your customers know who processes your credit card transactions. This information can be a credibility boost for a new business. Many shoppers will look for this information if they are new to your website.

The criteria for easy form entry is essentially ‘user friendly’, meaning that it should be simple to go back and reenter only the information that needs changing. To eliminate automated form entries, many websites use a method where the visitor is shown a combination of letters and must enter this information before the form can be submitted. Some of these letter combos are so difficult to decipher that robots, as well as real people, are unable to use the form. I prefer the method where the visitor is asked to solve a simple math problem. Numbers are easier to read.

The only way you’ll know if you've got a usable shopping cart is by testing. Before your website goes live, assemble a group of five to ten people and see if they can complete a simple purchase using your shopping cart. Even after your website goes live, conduct customer surveys to monitor the usability of your shopping cart and be prepared to make changes as needed to meet the needs of your customers.