
Fundamental Guidelines Of E-Commerce Checkout Design - gulbrandr
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/04/06/fundamental-guidelines-of-e-commerce-checkout-design/
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djtumolo
Is there raw data for this available? I would like to see survey responses and
footage of the testers as well.

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agaton
Great guide but I really think this area needs a lot of innovation, the
checkout process isn't nearly as optimized as it should be. It's 2011 and you
still need to fill out the form every single time you want to buy anything.

I think we need to aim for the one-click-to-buy dream to get the checkout
process getting it's usability and conversion it has the potential for.
Apple's App Store is a great exampel of how easy we can make this come true.
Two clicks and a password and _boom_ you have bought the app. I want the same
standard on all e-commerce sites, possibly with Facebook Credits/Facebook
Connect, so whenever I'm logged in the purchase will take 1-3 clicks and no
damn forms to fill out.

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dansingerman
Maybe I'm the exception, but I don't want checking out to be too easy:

\- I like to type my credit card each time, I don't want sites storing it

\- I don't want to accidentally click things and buy things I don't want (I
click things a lot, just to 'see what they do')

\- I want the buying process to require _some_ effort, so I only end up buying
things I really want.

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agaton
Of course it will require some efforts. I think the iPhone App Store purchase
process handle it very nice, it requires enought effort but still makes it
smooth and easy.

Usability and the most simple solution will always win in the long run.

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mmcconnell1618
Interesting but there are a lot of things I would not suggest. For example,
the article suggests that expiration month on credit cards be listed "exactly
as it appears on the card" while failing to mention that there is no standard.
The author suggests you do NOT include the name of the month next to the
number but many cards use the name of the month so listing expiration as:
01-Jan, 02-Feb makes a lot of customers happy. I would read this article as
great suggestions but it doesn't mean the advice applies to your store
perfectly.

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ashchristopher
I have never seen month represented using the month name - at least not in
Canada.

Don't know what its like in other areas of the world. Perhaps we just need to
use some critical thought after reading and interpret the points based on our
markets.

I mean, it isn't a hard an fast rule - they are just giving some suggestions -
and I think they were pretty spot on.

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ssharp
Sites like WalMart and Zappos are mentioned in the article for doing things
that are non-ideal, according to Smashing's testing. It seems pretty
inconceivable for sites with such large revenues to not have done their own
internal usability testing. I wonder what led these sites to their current
usability/design decisions.

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danssig
Online is a different world. Don't assume those who "get" brick and mortar can
also "get" online. When walmart first chose to go online they realized this
might be a problem and hired a group out of California (this was during the
dot com bubble) to come in and do it. Those guys didn't do a very good job and
there was a bunch of noise being made by internal people about "we're good
enough to do this! We don't need some fancy California people!" so it came
back in house. Well they weren't good enough (to be fair, the "walmart online"
people weren't either).

Though, for me I always figured Walmart.com's biggest problem would be that
they couldn't take advantage of the internet tax rules: they have a presence
in every state afaik.

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jkeel
You seem to have a bit of understanding of what happened internally at walmart
with walmart.com in the early days. Walmart.com is still based out of
California (Menlo Park I believe) even though the company was brought back
into the Walmart Inc. many years ago.

The original "walmart online" folks weren't web developers (Visual Basic
coders) and really had a tough time understanding the request/response nature
of the web (although they had no UX or QA people either, which led to other
issues).

The Arkansas/California issues you talked about also stemmed from jealousy.
There were stories of the associates in CA having pool tables, foosball
tables, catered food, etc. Meanwhile, in AR the associates had extremely old
PCs, old software, required to work long hours, etc.

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pbz
They mention using a single column, but what about displaying the address
fields in similar way to how they're shown on paper, i.e. city, state zip in
one line? Would this fall under one-column or two-column presentation?

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aresant
Just to double down on one of their points about showing security around
sensitive fields - one of the bread and butter things we do on optimization
projects is test trust logos and trust logo placement.

Getting the best vs. worst positioning can drive as much as 15 - 20% on cart
abandon - more details in article:

[http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-
of...](http://conversionvoodoo.com/blog/2010/07/proper-placement-of-trust-
logos-can-make-a-huge-difference-in-conversion-rate/)

