Common Sense eCommerce

Have you ever been to website and bought something; then noticed how difficult the buying process was?  Then contrast that to a website that does a superb job of completing the transaction with as little interference as possible.  I like to sit up and take notice of both extremes and ask where our websites fit into this spectrum.

I like to think they’re near the second, but it’s nice to go through the shopping cart process once in awhile to test and ‘play the customer’.  Amazon and GoDaddy are both examples of confusing places to conduct transactions.  I think it has to do mostly with the barrage of upselling going on at those sites.

I have nothing against upselling and in fact, it should be part of every business strategy.  Whether it has any place in the shopping carts of commodity purchases like Amazon or GoDaddy transactions is somewhat debatable. But I’m pretty sure they could both do a better job of upselling without hitting you over the head with everything they have to offer that’s related.

I also am an Amazon MarketPlace seller, so I see both sides of the coin there.  I often get complaints from customers who say they didn’t mean to buy that item or that they’re confused about which vendor they bought it from (when items are aggregated from different MarketPlace sellers, strange things happen).

Bottom line, make sure your transaction process is painless for the customer.  They might remember how painless it was and want to return!  If it’s painful, they’ll probably remember that too.
Tags: Online Transcation Process, Shopping Cart Process, Online Upselling, eCommerce Transactions

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