It’s a rare find online when you come across an e-commerce shopping
cart that not only works well but is also designed well from a
usability and persuasive point of view. So when I found one during my
last minute holiday shopping this season I had to make note of it, and
take my hat off to Office Depot for designing their shopping cart so
well, if only all online e-commerce sites were like this perhaps there
would be less abandoned shopping carts and more online sales. If you
have an e-commerce site please learn from what www.officedepot.com is doing right.
So many online shopping carts put a major barrier right in the first step of checkout, but Office Depot removes roadblocks right from the moment of checkout. After you’ve filled your cart clicked the checkout button and are ready to complete your transaction you’re in step one of the cart buying funnel – login. Most sites at this point only offer you one option, to create an account before continuing to complete your transaction, Office Depot offers their customers two options, Log in for returning customers with accounts and a continue to checkout option for new customers.
Offering a continue checkout option without forcing a potential customer to fill out account information eliminates friction from the very beginning of the online buying process. This one simple addition to the checkout process lets you get right to the billing and shipping process. No hurdles to jump over no commitment, just simply buy. This is the way it should be on all e-commerce sites. When a website requires it’s buyers to join and or create an account, even if it’s as simple as creating a login name and password it psychologically puts a lot of pressure on the prospective buyer and creates friction in the buying process. It’s a stretch for every online shop to assume that every potential buyer want to engage in a long term buying relationship, something like that where a customer comes back again and again has to be earned and built over time through small successes and several purchases. Forcing a potential customer to create an account from step one is just placing a hurdle in front of them that they are forced to jump over. Why give them any reasons to not buy from you? Why put anything in the way of them giving you their billing information and completing the sale? The lesson learned from this example is to make it easy for a potential customer to buy from you. Remember just because they have reached this page, this step in your buying process doesn’t mean that the sale is done. The selling has to continue through every page of the shopping cart.
At the end of this cleaver buying process is when the sale has been made and the time to ask for extraneous unnecessary things like creating an account, which is exactly what OfficeDepot.com does, brilliantly.
Creating an account is a commitment from your visitor that they need to be ready for and willing to do. If this is the first time they have purchased from you, they may not be ready to enter into such a committed relationship. More online e-commerce sites need to be more like this and understand what is happening in the mind of their customers. Too many shopping carts are designed with no regard to the customer.
After the sale is made the customer is at the most cooperative, This confirmation page does an excellent job of stating the benefits of creating an account at the right time in the process, which doesn’t act as a barrier since the visitors intent, to buy has been satisfied. The lesson to learn is to satisfy the customer first, then the needs of the marketing department.
The only thing that Office Depot could do better at this point is to use the $20 OFF offer at the top of the order complete page as an incentive to creating an account or to signing up to receive special offers from Office Depot. This is the way to begin and build a valuable lasting online relationship online not by adding hurdles for the sake of easy web programming or just because that’s how almost everyone else online is doing it. Bravo Office Depot, there’s a lot to learn here.
