Purchasing online often involves a number of factors which are nonexistent in the physical world. Questions such as product availability, delivery options and delivery price take on greater meaning when shopping online. In the physical world these questions are answered before the stage of paying for goods; we know if a product is available because it is on the shelf, and delivery for most items is not usually an issue as we can take the product away with us.

image by emmerrrrrrr (flicker)

What can often frustrate users online is when these questions are not addressed until too late in the purchase process; when the user has already made some sort of a commitment to the product, only to find out it’s either not available, cannot be delivered in the expected time frame/location or delivery costs are too high. Had the user known these factors upfront during their browsing phase the frustration levels would be a lot lower and the chances of that user staying a customer much higher.

It is important to inform the users of the following before they arrive at the checkout. It  may be just enough for users to stay a customer rather than go straight to a competitors site. A few small changes can have a great impact on a user’s shopping experience

• If a product is out of stock provide this on the product listing page
• Offer an email alert when the product become available
• If, for whatever reason, a product cannot be delivered in the company’s standard time frame (next day delivery for example), provide this detail upfront on the product listing page, before users have committed to the order

Reducing user frustration leads to a much more happy and satisfied customer. And satisfied customers are more likely to return. Empowering users by giving them information before arriving at the checkout process of factors such as product availability, delivery time frames and costs is one simple method to do this.

Tags: checkout, delivery, product availability, shopping cart, Usability

This entry was posted on Friday, June 4th, 2010 at 15:53 and is filed under Uncategorized, Usability Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.