NetDirector™ e-Trade Pro

“Stats suggest that the average abandonment rate for shopping carts is around 60% and that 12% of these customers bail out before reaching the checkout stage.”

e-consultancy.com – Posted 11:00 26 Feb 2008
http://www.e-consultancy.com/news-blog/365079/how-to-plug-leaks-in-your-shopping-basket.html

Getting the checkout process right as an e-retailer is of paramount importance. This is the critical point to convert the perusing customer with some of their hard-earned cash. The customer is most sensitive during the checkout stage – you’ve done some good work to get them there and you mustn’t blow it with silly mistakes. Through the development of e-Trade Pro, we have researched countless whitepapers, articles, websites and more to try and identify key practices that must be implemented as part of the checkout process. These have since been incorporated into the software and we are still improving it every which way we can.

The article by e-consultancy relates to some of these key practices. Each have been commented on in comparison to our ecommerce software:

Link to the Product Page

e-Trade Pro (eTP) does this. The question is whether to open up the product link in a new browser window or not? Some customers don’t like new windows opening up… however, if you don’t create a new window and re-direct from checkout page, the shopper may not return to that page for whatever reason. Hmmm… We have kept it to open in the same window believing all shop links should open in the smae window.

Suggested Related Items
Available on the basket page as well as other ‘Featured Items’. We have kept this off final checkout page as want to keep this nice and simple as possible for customer – no distractions – just place the order please

View Basket Button Easy to Find

In eTP, the basket overview is always available in the top right hand corner when shopping. However, we have removed it on pages like the basket, billing and delivery and final checkout page – why do you need it on those pages when you are viewing the whole thing in the middle of your page? Also, this is the process adopted by ecommerce giants such as Amazon.com and Dabs.com.

Some future functionality to be added into e-Trade Pro is the facility for the shop owner to move components around the template… Play.com prefer their basket on the left hand side which will be possible in the software after this feature is completed.

Show Delivery Prices

eTP allows customers to see the delivery options and prices before the Checkout. The prices are estimated based on default delivery option – for example, if the shop is a UK shop, the standard UK delivery will be applied. However, on the basket page the customer has the facility to update the delivery options / prices based on their exact location including country and postal / zip code – this prevents the ‘nice surprise’ on the checkout page.

Estimate the Delivery Time
Ok, so our software isn’t perfect… yet. We don’t have an intelligent mechanism in order to predict the delivery time for the customer. However, we do offer a content managed text / image area on the basket page that will easily allow any shop owner to inform customers of expected lead times. Some text like this could easily be entered and would be very obvious to any customer:

‘Orders placed before 3pm will be dispatched (and should be received) next working day.’

Clear Checkout Button

eTP always has a clear checkout button when an item has been added to the basket. A little shopping trolley moves in the background of the basket overview to attract the customer’s attention after they have added an item(s) to the Basket.

Show Payment Options
Again, our e-commerce software has an area that is dedicated to display all payment options on the basket page. It is made very simple to upload images of the credit cards you accept and further write some text about payment options – for example:

‘Shop X accepts the following credit cards:’

Add Product Images
It is good practice to include thumbnail images against the line items in your order to give customers the confidence that their items in the basket are the right ones before completing the purchase. eTP does this as standard as can be seeen in screenshot under sub-heading ‘Link to the Product Page’ above.

Link to Returns Policy
eTP includes a link to the returns policy on every page in your shop. It is in the footer along with the delivery & returns and terms & conditions. Form a more obvious link to the returns policy on the basket page, a link can easily be populated into the content managed text / image area.

Add a Contact Number
During e-Trade Pro’s development, it became apparent to us that displaying a telephone number for customers at all time was very important – people on the phone are easier to convert into paying customers than through a website… well, I suppose this is dependent on the sales skills of the phone representative

In eTP,  we devoted a particular area in the banner specifically for the telephone number. Click below:

Being the shop banner, it appears on every page in a prominent position where the customer will easily see it. We have even made the area open to insert live chat tools as well as telephone numbers, email addresses (not advised on own) etc:

For more information on NetDirector e-Trade Pro, please visit our website: http://www.netdirectoretradepro.co.uk