Good ARticle: And another reason why the Prestashop developers should shorten the check out process. "Still love ya tho"...

[Hoodgrown]

Panasonic turns to customer feedback for checkout redesign

Panasonic Consumer Electronics Company gathered feedback from web customers when redesigning its checkout process. The result? More information on a single web page and a progress meter showing customers how far along they are in checkout.

Panasonic used web design and consulting firm Fry Inc. for guidance in the new checkout process. The two companies formed a focus group of Panasonic’s target customers and asked participants to try to purchase a specific good and check out. Feedback illustrated that customers wanted more clear and visible shipping information, better guidance on how to place items in the shopping cart and clearer security messages.

“We wanted to optimize our current checkout process and sought a redesign based on concrete principles and research,” says Merwan Mereby, Panasonic’s vice president, new business development and e-business. “Fry’s knowledge and experience with e-commerce best practices and their in-depth look into our process was essential and ultimately produced the clear, user-friendly checkout our customers wanted.”

The new checkout process shows shipping and billing information on one page and a progress bar with numbered steps as a visual reminder of the process. The new checkout also features an order summary that appears along the right side of the page throughout the process to give the customer a clear understanding of all charges, including tax and shipping.

David Fry, president of Fry, says the changes will decrease shopping cart abandonment and increase revenue for Panasonic. “By making the checkout process simpler and easy to use on customer-facing pages, Panasonic will see a significant decrease in shopping cart abandonment as well as gains in revenue from transactions that previously were not being completed.” Panasonic is No. No. 160 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.

[Raver]

HoodGrown keep up the Single Page Checkout echo alve in Prestashop, they have thus far done a phenomenal job...

I do however Hope( hey I am an optimist) Prestashop Developers will eventually hear us on this issue on optimising the checkout process!

A simple rule applies within ecommerce—the fewer the clicks to complete a goal, the higher the percentage of consumers who will complete the task. Too often, cart and checkout processes extend through many clicks and lead consumers down a long and winding road.

Retailers lose interested customers because consumers lose patience or simply become distracted when progressing.
Let us not frustrate our customers and inhibit our growth on such a wonderful cart such as Prestashop.

Prestashop Developers please hear our pleas and continue your great effort in bring this cart to even greater heights! :-)

[Hoodgrown]

Interview with Kevin Cook, ProductCart developer.
http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/1072-Cart-of-the-Week-ProductCart

one paragraph that stands out to me is:

Arrigoni: “We asked our users what they were missing. It’s incredible the amount of smart features they came up with. We haven’t made final decisions on everything that will make it into the next release, but we can say that ProductCart v4 [september 2009], will have a slick, AJAX-powered one-page checkout, more sales and coupon management features, stronger content management tools and lots more features.”

Come on guys (Prestashop Developers)... we need that one page check out... and since you guys are doing a lot of ajax things.. this is something that would be right up your alley.

[4eyes]

The process they describe is exactly what we did for one of our clients (except we probably got paid a whole lot less)

We reduced the pages in the process and kept the shopper informed as to where they were in the process.
We also advised them how long the checkout process would take.

There was a significant increase in sales conversions.

Its not really 'rocket science' - the more obstacles in the way the higher the cart abandonment rate.

Right now, I would find it difficult to recommend PS for clients - the lost orders are too high a 'cost'


Please guys, give this a priroity - everything else about PS is great.

[TropischBruin]

According to the PS dev-team the single page checkout will not be here soon.
The main goal atm is to deliver a stable and (almost) bug free release.

Creating a Single Page checkout means a lot of re-coding and this cannot be done while preparing for this latest release.

[4eyes]

According to the PS dev-team the single page checkout will not be here soon

Rats - that sucks, but if the developers don't see it as a priority given all the evidence, I guess there is nothing more we can do.

I guess I will have to defect to 'that other cart'