Ba685: Electronic Commerce – E-Commerce Shopping CartsEssay Preview: Ba685: Electronic Commerce – E-Commerce Shopping CartsReport this essayE-commerce Shopping CartsBA685: Electronic CommerceUnit V AssignmentRoger McLauchlanGrantham UniversityAbstractOnline shopping carts are one of the last things a customer sees prior to making a purchase. Customers spend hours browsing a website, collecting items in the company’s shopping cart, and at last they get to checkout with their cart full of wonderful new items. However, many customers are abandoning their shopping carts without completing their purchase. This is due to frustration in the checkout process and is something that is completely avoidable. Online retailors need to focus on improving customer experience at checkout to improve their chances of closing the deal every time a customer goes to their site.
E-commerce Shopping CartsShopping carts have made the internet a much easier place to shop. Customers used to have to fill out online forms with descriptive information for every item they wanted to purchase, which could, and quite often did, result in errors that cost the companies money and customers time. Now customers simply click a button next to the item they want to purchase and it is added to their shopping cart. There are many things the customer can do once the items are in the shopping cart but ultimately the interaction should result in a sale. However, many customers are abandoning their shopping carts causing companies to lose a lot of money. That is why it is so important that companies cater their checkout systems to meet their customers’ needs.
The main goal of an online retailor is to get customers to make purchases. The way retailors do that is by making every aspect of the buying experience as easy and pleasurable as possible. Early in the internet’s existence actual purchases were completed by consumers having to fill out forms on the stores web page. These online forms required the customer to enter the item number, description of the item, price of the item, quantity they wanted, and lastly the total cost of the purchase. This was an extremely time consuming task for customers and led to large amounts of error. Many customers would receive incorrect items because they would enter in a wrong item number, or the item they ordered would arrive in the wrong color or size because they forgot to put it in the description. This caused companies to lose a lot of money. Additionally, customer trust in companies, and ecommerce in general, began to decline. This is where to shopping cart enters the stage.
The online shopping cart provides customers with a place to store all the items they would like to buy without having to enter in all the information about it manually. “All of the details about the item, including its price, product number, and other identifying information, are stored automatically in the cart” (Schneider, 2015). Now customers can travel throughout the site selecting multiple items, place them all in the shopping cart, and complete their transaction without ever having to enter anything more than the quantity of each item they want and their payment information. Additionally, shopping carts provide customers with the ability to compare items they are interested in. For instance, if a customer is interested in purchasing a new car stereo but doesn’t know what brand to buy, they could simply add several different ones to their shopping cart and compare each of them to see which is best suits their needs.
There are some fundamental requirements to having an effective shopping cart though. One of those is communication during the checkout experience. “92% of the largest U.S. e-commerce sites fail to have adequate messaging throughout checkout” (Tym, 2015). Without proper guidance some customers may not fully understand what is required of them next, causing frustration and resulting in a lost sale. Another requirement is ease of navigation. Customers need to have the ability to go from the shopping cart, back to the items they were looking at, back to the shopping cart, and on to another search without requiring a training course in the site navigation. If a customer cannot find their way back to the main site from the shopping cart they will feel like they have been trapped into making a purchase and will most likely leave the site before completing it. The most important aspect of
e-commerce checkout is the ease of making transactions. ‡92% of the largest U.S. e-commerce sites fail to have adequate message for your purchase‡ (Tym, 2015). Without proper guidance some customers may not fully understand what is required of them next, causing frustration and resulting in a lost sale. A similar goal of e-commerce checkout is that people who don’t want to shop at all should not be required to spend up to 30 minutes to find their item from a checkout page. However, more information on how e-commerce checkout works can be found here. ‡93% of the largest U.S. e-commerce sites fail to provide effective messaging in the checkout experience. All of these sites require a set of basic, intuitive, and easy to use controls to help the customer make purchasing decisions with ease. Not all of the online stores make purchases at the same rate. There are some e-commerce stores that do allow customers to do some of their shopping the very exact same. When you go online your personal cart should be at a place where you can put your items out for you. At certain stores, items don’t actually go to a checkout page, but are put there that way if necessary. They are also more accessible compared with online stores where more information can be displayed. When shopping you don’t need to go up to the checkout page, or even into a different section (it might be in a different store). It may sound simple, but checkout for items in a different category can be an experience without waiting for them to be in the shopping cart, even on a smaller site. This fact is the reason why so many people rely on online retailers when shopping. The only problem is for that person who gets lost in the checkout process. “94% of the largest U.S. e-commerce sites fail to provide adequate messaging for your purchase. Here are some of the biggest problems e-commerce stores experienced when buying with your credit card : “You won’t be as comfortable with this checkout when you open the credits.” “To make your purchases, make sure you buy first…this will prevent delays and help you make the sale easily and quickly.” “For those who are not sure where to turn, try again. Just make sure you are making your purchase and that you have time on your hands.” “For those who were hesitant, see how easy it is to make purchases.” “You will see a great feeling when you make a purchase, even though it is small.” “Don’t buy the store where you did not purchase it. Just make sure you do make a purchase before you buy the merchandise.” “Please do what you do best and don’t hesitate to ask.” It’s no secret how e-commerce store users feel before they’re able to order online. Having your credit card details at the checkout is a much better solution for that user. There will always be customers who don’t know where to turn. And because of this it’s much easier for you to get your orders in order without waiting for them to be in the checkout. While there have been cases where e-commerce retailers faced this problem before purchasing online, they are now beginning to get their own problems: “I have a question about ordering a business online. Can you give me a specific date for your order?” Yes, there are a handful of retail stores whose customer services can accommodate a full order at a time if the order is placed within two business days. The question is what to tell your sales and customer service team or