[thelist] e-commerce

Keith Davis cache at dowebs.com
Tue May 29 12:48:52 CDT 2001


Shawnie Wallace wrote:
> 
> We are looking for a shopping cart program for a new e-commerce site. What's
> out there that's reliable and reasonably priced?

A different perspective:

Reliability, price, set up, maintenance, those are really secondary
criteria. You didn't ask the important question, "What's out there that
works?" 

Surveys taken after last year's Christmas sales revealed that, on
average, 60% of all web shopping carts were abandoned before checkout.
Walmart doesn't have that problem! And some websites don't either. 

Top complaint: repeated interruption of the buying impulse
Second place: too many options and distractions
Third: navigation disorientation
Fourth: information requested that was unrelated to the purchase
Fifth: surprise, surprise, all of the markup is in the shipping!

The first 3 are design issues, the second two are management issues.

The real criteria for choosing a cart is how it treats the consumer. If
it gets 80% of customers through checkout, it's indeed "reliable and
reasonably priced". There's a world of difference between a cart that
works like a programmer thinks and one that works like shoppers shop.
It's the ultimate 'usability' test since it's measurable right to the
penny. And 6 months from now it's the only yard stick that your client
will use.

There are tons of features to consider, the first one being
batch-processing vs. live-time-processing, but the main question, "if I
wasn't me would I put up with this?" is the most important one. Getting
your client's inventory online is not the objective, getting your
client's inventory sold is.

Some of the NASDAQ e-retailers who went belly-up also had the worst
abandonment rates. And they spent fortunes on their carts. 

keith




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