Lessons Learned from Online Shopping Cart Usability Testing

Posted: 19 Apr 2011 06:22 AM PDT

Is your checkout process working for you, or working against you? We came across a great article on Smashing Magazine this week that we thought was worth sharing. It talks about the good, the bad and the ugly of e-commerce checkout design.

Almost all of the findings of the study apply to the hosting/domains industry, although the testing looks like it was done primarily on sites that sold physical goods. There’s a ton of overlap regardless of whether you are selling and shipping a widget to someone’s house, or taking them through a checkout for a domain name and hosting package.

Assume Nothing About Your Customers

Reading through the article, I found myself surprised by what I perceived to be a lack of general knowledge about “how things work” on the part of the test subjects. On more than a few occasions, I thought, “Seriously? They didn’t know how that works?” I also realized that it’s very easy to make assumptions about how users will interact with websites when those building them are used to the process.

This article is definitely worth a read if you are looking for ways to improve your overall customer experience and minimize your rate of cart abandonment.

Read the article

Thanks to Flickr user Wiedmaier for the shopping cart image and for releasing it under a Creative Commons license.

OPENSRS

martes, 19 de abril de 2011