Catherine "Cat" Seda

Monday, August 28, 2006

Abandon Shopping Cart!

Once again, I couldn't fit all of my company's street information into a shopping cart's address field. I was booking a flight. Fortunately, the airline offered a second address field. Saved! Even still, this is a big company. Why are they limiting their shopping cart fields? Are your forms frustrating prospects?

Check out my February 2006 blog post. And let me know if you've stopped your sale because of unfriendly forms. What made you leave?

P.S. Sign-up for my free e-zine at www.CatherineSeda.com in September and you'll get my article on "Forms of Fear: Your web forms could be scaring away potential customers" right away.

posted by Cat Seda at 5:40 PM

3 Comments:

  • Hi Catherine.

    I abandon shopping carts all the time; mainly because of all the steps. I think online retailers need to find ways to consolidate pages to provide a really quick checkout process, like Amazon.

    If the shopping cart is really long (i.e. signing up for phone service), I would at least like a gauge that tells me that I am on step 1 of 6 or something like that.

    I wrote an article that addresses some these issues. I would love your feedback.

    http://www.britopian.com/blog/2006/08/17/how-to-kill-online-conversion-rates

    thanks,
    Michael Brito

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 2:24 PM  

  • Hey Michael,

    I read your article and I agree with most of your recommendations!

    As a user, I hate pop-ups too because they're distracting. Let your site or blog visitors see what they came for. A pop-up is like saying, "Hey, I know you came here for something, but look at THIS instead!!!"

    I'm all for an exit pop-up, however. It's a great survey or marketing opportunity. And because people are leaving your site, it's not distracting.

    Music can be done right. But it can also be very very wrong.

    The mile-long shopping cart is bad for business. Although I don't suggest creating a 10-question marketing survey before letting someone buy something, asking "How did you find our site?" is a key question to ask. And most people don't mind it. Just make it optional, not required.

    Thanks for your comment!

    By Blogger Cat Seda, at 7:08 PM  

  • thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it.

    - Michael

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 10:46 PM  

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