Make Sure Your E Commerce Shopping Cart Is User Friendly

Setting up an online website is easy. Marketing the products you sell, while requiring a bit of online skill, can take a bit of work. But your job is not finished once you have accomplished these two. You cannot just waiting for traffic and hope that they become potential customers. You need the right tools that converts your traffic into sales. To accomplish this your website will need an e-commerce shopping cart. But getting a shopping cart is one thing; maximizing its benefits is another.

While many people choose online to purchase merchandise, it doesn’t mean that you can get complacent and assume that if they happen to stumble upon your website, they will buy your products. This is a wrong way of looking at traffic. You still have to please your customers and please them well. You need to know what they want – not necessarily the things they need to have but the right tools to guide them through the entire online purchasing process. And with tougher competition internet wide, you need to raise the bar and stand out among the rest.

Thus, your online store needs not only to look good, but also to have an efficient shopping cart system. Here’s how to maximize your website and shopping cart and convert traffic into buyers:



Use all the tricks in the business. Use large headings and sub-headings to let your customers know where they are; and breadcrumb navigation to help your customers know how deep they are on your website.

Use search functions to let customers find what they are looking for fast and easy, especially if you are holding a large inventory and multi-page site. Place the search function above the fold where customers can see it.

Give the power to your customers to narrow down their search options by using search category refinement. customers should be able to refine according to size, shape, color etc. Make sure that they can clear this refinement anytime. Utilize sort option that allows your customer see your product by category.

Let your customers remove or change items from their cart easily. Help them find product that are related to the items they have chosen. Cross sell!

Place your contact information where customers can easily see it.

Never allow your customers to go on a lengthy process of shopping, only to find out that the products they have chosen are out of stock. Show only the products that are on stock or place “out of stock” mark on those what are not in your inventory. Most shopping carts have this feature.

Cart abandonment rates are high simply because many shopping cart services do not allow shopping before registration. What you should do is to let your customers to add items in their cart before they register for an account. Some shopping cart vendors offer this feature.

Show them every detail of the product they wish to buy including the price, discounts (if there’s any), applicable taxes and added fees. Do not hide any information that the customers should know.

The key to any online store is usability. Many online shoppers get irritated even with the tiniest glitch on your site and is the primary reason many abandon their shopping cart order even at the last step in the purchasing product cycle. Keep your customers fully satisfied by making everything easy and utilize your e-commerce shopping cart effectively. Extra efforts may require time but the pay offs will be well worth the trouble.