After 'Add To Cart' - stay on product page or go to cart?

moto · #1 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 05:56 AM

Hi

Just a quick question to canvas people views.

After adding a product into the shopping cart is it best to stay on the product page or be taken to the shopping cart page?

Currently customers on my website are taken to the shopping cart page, but I am not sure this is the best option for people looking to buy several different items.

Many thanks in advance for any opinions.

moto-racing

sub_kovert · #2 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 09:25 AM

A good solution is to bounce to a page saying 'the item has been added to your basket' and then bounce back to the product page. Many carts also have a popup notification window informing you of the addition.

Katt · #3 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 05:22 PM

I think it depends on how your store is set up and the types of items you sell. I have a supplies site that has many products on each page, and customers usually buy more than one type of product. In that case it makes sense to keep them on the product page so they can easily keep adding items to the cart. With bigger ticket items though, I would have one item per page, and I would take you to the shopping cart page.

Shift4SMS · #4 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 05:28 PM

I was about to reply but Katt beat me to it. It depends on what you sell and your customers. Small store with very limited number of big ticket items then go right to checkout. Large store with many items or your customers commonly order multiple items on an order then stay on the product page.

Good luck.

tmaster · #5 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 05:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moto

Hi
After adding a product into the shopping cart is it best to stay on the product page or be taken to the shopping cart page?

That depends on what you are selling and how many items you think they will be buying. On one of my sites where you click in 15 or 20 items that will make up your order you could not go to a cart in between each add or the customers would get mad and give up.

But for other types of sales it would be ok.

fivetone · #6 (**permalink**) 12-08-2006, 11:10 PM

Good question. I consulted my copy of Nielsen's E-Commerce User Experience about this. It can be done both ways, and as others have said may depend upon how many items you think customers will be buying. The most important factor according to Nielsen is to provide strong feedback when an item is put into the cart:

"When customers put an item in their shopping carts, they need to see that something has happened. Most sites provide feedback by taking the user to the shopping cart page where they could see the item they had just added."

But this isn't the only way to provide feedback. He goes on to say:

"Some designs don't take the user to the shopping cart page automatically. Instead, when the user added an item to the shopping cart, the product page persisted, but the shopping cart area changed to show that something had happened. This approach is not a bad idea if the change in the cart area is easily noticed and if the customer usually buys several items from the same page in one shopping sesssion, which isn't always the case."

CIGrp · #7 (**permalink**) 12-09-2006, 12:25 AM

I happen agree with fivetone's posting. Many do not consider the actual actions and interactions of the customers experience while shopping, when they add a cart system to their website. Your posting brings up a very good point... you'd not consider this until after your added your cart system.

The "one size fit's all" is not always a good choice.

Since most systems offered are not easily modified as your requirement's change, many times these small details are overlooked and when discovered, rarely does the merchant want to make a change for the better.

It's always important to reinforce the item's purchased and placed into a cart, but when to do it? I think we all can agree the customer usually won't see the cart detail on the webpage.

It would be easy to allow the customer to choose which they prefer. If your system allows them to pre-register before they can make it to the checkout page, you'd have a checkbox for their viewing preference.

If it offers them the "option" of having their info auto-entered, ( which I prefer to do ) then you'd also be able to offer the same checkbox option.

In addition, you could also allow them the option on your actual webpage. This of course this too would depend on the versatility of your cart system.

A cart system can be a much more valuable tool then most systems provide. When selecting one, find out how easily it can be adapted to your own eCommerce learning curve.

BigD · #8 (**permalink**) 12-09-2006, 03:36 AM

I use a variety of sites for shopping for my business, clients, family members and myself. Some orders are for single items, others for a list of items.

The best sites for me are those that stay on the product page and summarise my basket in a column alongside.

Interested in learning from people who are not totally confident with Internet shopping, I study their reaction as we input an order. Without exception, they are comfortable with the process when shopping on product-page/basket-summary sites.

For sites that do not adopt this approach, I witness frustration and incomprehension as we bounce from product to basket. ‘Where are we?’, ‘why did it do that?’, 'How do I get back to the ... ?', 'Did I buy that or not?' and so on.

On a different point, but still a shopping-related one, the sites that I will have nothing further to do with are those that omit to warn me until I go to checkout that VAT (tax) and delivery charges are to be added to the cost of my order.

CIGrp · #9 (**permalink**) 12-09-2006, 06:23 AM

BigD -->"For sites that do not adopt this approach, I witness frustration and incomprehension as we bounce from product to basket. ‘Where are we?’, ‘why did it do that?’, 'How do I get back to the ... ?', 'Did I buy that or not?' and so on."

This seems like a interesting point, yet the purchasing sales numbers don't support it. Millions of transactions are done everyday while the customer seems to navigate and make it to the product pages and to the checkout areas. Linking is not a new idea,
and most all get around webpages with the same linking process. Third-party processing might not offer the identity of the merchant site as well as they should, but thats a different issue.

BigD -->"On a different point, but still a shopping-related one, the sites that I will have nothing further to do with are those that omit to warn me until I go to checkout that VAT (tax) and delivery charges are to be added to the cost of my order."

In such cart systems, it would seem to be sort of a negitive. If you do not actually know where the product is being shipped to, exactly how do you know if any charges are to be added?

I would think that the idea sounds good, until the merchant really needs something more exact to their specific shipping costs.

Clint1 · #10 (**permalink**) 12-09-2006, 06:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by moto

Hi

Just a quick question to canvas people views.

After adding a product into the shopping cart is it best to stay on the product page or be taken to the shopping cart page?

Currently customers on my website are taken to the shopping cart page, but I am not sure this is the best option for people looking to buy several different items.

Many thanks in advance for any opinions.

moto-racing

After the "Add to cart" button is clicked, mine is setup to go to the cart and the cart page has a "Continue shopping" button on it.

edhan · #11 (**permalink**) 12-09-2006, 11:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clint1

After the "Add to cart" button is clicked, mine is setup to go to the cart and the cart page has a "Continue shopping" button on it.

I always like to option of Continue Shopping Button or Checkout after I have made several selection of my purchase. So when I have enough items added in my cart, I will click on the Checkout button and conclude my purchase!

**wige** · #12 (**permalink**) 12-12-2006, 06:31 PM

On my site I have about 25% of my shoppers wishing to add additional items, while the remainder want to check out immediately. My solution was to take the user to another page that only has two links: continue shopping and check out in big block letters.
I did this mostly because after five focus groups had me add one notification after another that the item was added to the shopping cart (first a bright red notification bar at the top of the main section of the page, then changing the heading of the page, then adding a floating notification of the cart status to the side of the page) they still said all these things were "too subtle" (a direct quote from the last focus group before I used the block text two choice menu at 18points).
The feedback when I used the menu was positive, the users seem to like having a choice of what they do. The text on the page I give is a straightforward question - Your tickets have been added, what would you like to do now? and the two appropriate links.