How to Improve Your Shopping Cart Conversions

(How to make your shopping cart suck less)

Saw this cartoon over at The Oatmeal and I just had to share it. It highlights what's wrong with just about every shopping cart and registration process on the web.

Underneath the humour, and despite the scatological language, there are lessons for us all to learn here. This will help you reduce your shopping cart abandonment rates and increase your conversion rates. Study it hard.

All images courtesy of The Oatmeal

Error Messages and Passwords

I particularly like the password rant. I'd add that if I need a 12 character password, that's not a word, and can or cannot contain symbols or special characters, must contain at least one numeral and no duplicate numbers, please let me know beforehand.

CAPTCHA Codes

One of my particular peeves. See Conversion Rate Optimisation Tip # 6

It always makes me laugh when they say prove that you're not a robot and then provide a CAPTCHA code that only a super computer like "Deep Thought" could work out.

Billing Information

Of extreme annoynance here is if you miss filling in a field, or do it incorrectly , then the process makes you fill in all of the details again. When theat happens I leave, as I suspect many of your own potential customers do too.

How Did You Hear About Us

Like many people, I just lie here just to get the process over with. Tip: This form no longer serves any useful purpose.

Would You Like Fries With That?

Was there ever anything more annoying than this question? It smacks of snake oil and hard sell. Maybe it works on Americans; it certainly doesn't work on Australians.

If you like this cartoon and want to see more like it such as "What Would Don Draper Do?" then head over to The Oatmeal.