Top 10 Shopping Cart Design Mistakes
08/19/2007 Post By: Andrew Kamphuis
My friend and old colleague Geof Harries linked me into this article from Usability News discussing research from 2002 on shopping cart design mistakes and comparing them to the mistakes made today.
It’s nice to see that programmers are generally getting better about shopping cart usability, and that the 2007 showed vast improvements for a lot of shopping cart design.
Here is a link to the article.
Here is a list of the mistakes from 2002:
- Calling a Shopping Cart anything but a Shopping Cart.
- Requiring users to click a 'BUY' button to add an item to the shopping cart. (We are guilty of this sometimes – maybe we should be changing all our buttons to say 'Add To Cart')
- Giving little to no visual feedback that an item has been added to the cart.
- Forcing the user to view the Shopping Cart every time an item is placed there. (note that in 2007 this practice is more accepted)
- Asking the user to buy other related items before adding an item to the cart
- Requiring a user to REGISTER before adding an item to the cart (I personally hate this)
- Requiring a user to change the quantity to zero to remove an item from the cart.
- Including written instructions to update the items in the cart
- Requiring a user to scroll to find an Update cart button
- Requiring a user to enter shipping, billing, and all personal information before knowing the final costs including shipping and tax
My personal pet peeves are complex carts, carts that have option overload (too many options), and having to register to checkout.
If I had to pick my favorite shopping cart experience on the web at this point in time, it would be the shopping experience at Abercrombie. (They have most of the features I love, except their registration isn’t currently working, and it’s hard to change the quantity on an item in the cart). Otherwise it's a great experience in simplicity.
What do you like / dislike about shopping carts on the web? Email me or post your thoughts below.
Comments
shopping cart - 04/30/2008
http://www.2shoppingcart.net
Hi
It is a very nice and great post and Ilike it.
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