For an online businessperson, especially those who are along the lines of retail and sales, one of the most important investments that you can make is having a shopping cart system that will convert guests and visitors into buying customers. Thus, you will most certainly need to consider a lot of things when having such systems created and designed in order to make them fit into your existing websites.
In having a shopping cart system, you have two options to choose from: you can either buy one of those ready-made shopping cart software, or have one custom made. Of course, the latter one is better since it allows you to have it designed or tailor made to your specifications, a major aspect that needs to be considered in the construction of a shopping cart system. When you do opt to have a custom made shopping cart system, here are 5 design tips that can help to make a great system that not only looks great but also has the potential to increase your sales.
User-friendly Cart System
First and foremost is having your shopping cart system designed to be as user-friendly as possible. When customers have already browsed over your products and have chosen one or two among them, the next thing to do is to add them to their carts. And since not all online shoppers are web techies, you need something that is easy for them to use. Ask your web developer to design your shopping cart system in the simplest ways possible, one that will let the customers easily navigate through the items they have in their cart and one that will make them buy the product without too much hassle. This will be elaborated in the following paragraphs.
Don't Ask too Many Questions
One thing that puts would be buyers from making an actual purchase is by plaguing them with too many questions about "customer information." Sure, it makes your website sound secure, but too many of these questions is an overkill. Tell your web developer to such questions to three or five, choosing to ask only those that really matter like customer name, shipping address, mode of payment and so on. Don't bother annoying customers with questions like birthdays, security questions like mother's maiden name and so on.
Provide Necessary Information
Your online shopping cart system should tell the customers what they want and need to know. Tell your web developer not to bother putting product information for items in their shopping carts since customers already read this in the browsing page before they added the item in the cart. Instead, put something like "this item is already in your cart" and a "buy now" button. Just that. Customers get turned off when they have to read about something that they already know.
In addition, your shopping cart system should immediately tell the customers the final computation of the item they are buying or how much they will actually need to pay. Customers won't buy from you the next time when they get surprised by additional charges that weren't there when they were making the purchase. Thus, ask your developer to design your cart system in a way that it includes the computation of taxes and shipping costs automatically.
Short Registration
Another thing that puts off customers and makes sales go down the drain is by asking your customers to fill up pages after pages of registration forms before they can make use of the shopping cart. Again, ask only for the necessary information.
Furthermore, if you want customers to become repeat customers, you should only ask them to sign up after they have bought something from you. A sign up page can be included in the "thank you" page that you will send your customers after they made an actual purchase.
Save Shopping Carts
Not all people who placed items in their shopping carts will actually buy them, a sad fact for many online businessmen. This is because shoppers usually put items into their cart and then leaves the site after that in order for them to think hard about the items they are planning to buy, which is only fair.
When they come back after mulling over, you have to make sure that the items in their cart are still there, complete with the necessary information they need to make the purchase. No shopper would like to start from the beginning, and causing them to do so will certainly make them look for an online store with better services than yours.
When having your cart system designed, take note of the above mentioned things and others that you want since you have to outline all these to your developer. Remember, a great shopping cart system can make or break your online business. With such a system in place along with equally great products, you can be sure that your customers will be more than happy to come back and make more purchases from you.
