“A ‘friendly’ shopping cart lets customers edit item quantities, remove items, alter attributes (product options), and more, all without leaving the actual shopping cart page,” – Eric Leuenberger
Online businesses have come a long way in the modern world and now directly compete with brick-and-mortar enterprises to win mind share and customer dollars. Every business enterprise must work to re-engineer and refine the customer experience to stay competitive in modern markets. Creating the perfect shopping cart experience can help online merchants to boost market traction and significantly enhance the commercial fortunes of their business enterprise. We must note that the very nature of the online domain offers business operators access to huge volumes of granular data that can be leveraged through the use of interesting techniques and tactics.
E-commerce operators and businesses can craft the perfect shopping cart experience by segmenting customers based on their spending habits. This approach implies that e-commerce companies closely track online customer behaviour in terms of browsing time per session per customer, the average spending amount of each customer, and customers’ interest in special offers and shopping discounts, and other similar metrics. This approach helps to bucket online visitors into light spenders, medium spenders, and regular and heavy spenders. Every business operates to make a profit and therefore, the heavy spenders may be targeted with special treatment. One strategy that may be considered is to create an algorithm that identifies and tracks the heavy spenders on e-commerce websites. The said program can offer such customers substantial discounts (based on their shopping history) every time they log onto the website. The shopping cart may be automated when such customers browse the website and can be programmed to display prominently the total amount of dollars spent and the large discounts that automatically apply to the shopping carts of privileged customers. In addition to discounts, freebies and special merchandise can be offered to bulk up the shopping cart as an added incentive for the customer to complete the transaction. We note that this approach can help to spur buying activity online and create the perfect shopping cart experience for regular and heavy spenders, thereby attracting significant amounts of customer dollars into the business.
Businesses can choose to bridge the digital domain and the offline world by offering customers a choice to complete their shopping expedition online and by collecting the items on their shopping cart at a nearby brick-and-mortar business outlet. We could say that this adds a useful dose of variety to the perfect shopping cart experience because customers that opt for this method can visit the physical retail establishment and collect their items on the same day. This approach removes the time typically required of e-commerce customers between closing their transactions online and waiting for the physical delivery of the goods at the home or office address. This approach also spells business benefits for the e-commerce operator in terms of saving on fuel that is spent in the physical delivery of the goods. We note that shoppers that opt for this online and offline mode of shopping help to reduce the carbon footprint of e-commerce operators and contribute to the preservation of the natural environment.
Online businesses must constantly brainstorm in their pursuit of creating the perfect shopping cart experience for customers. Any improvements in the said mechanism helps e-commerce operators to boost their bottom line and earn a higher return on their investments. Significant gains in the online shopping experience can be created by offering customers the choice to shop online as a family. This can mean the creation of common log-in credentials for a declared family unit and allowing different members of the family to shop simultaneously via multiple connected devices. This approach replicates family shopping expeditions in the real world, wherein members of a family visit the supermarket and collect the desired items of merchandise in a common shopping cart. The online equivalent of this shopping strategy can be incentivised by viewing online merchandise through the lens of family members’ individual tastes and preferences. This approach can be engineered and refined to create the perfect shopping cart experience for the entire family.
The online shopping cart can be re-invented to accommodate a wish list. This concept of segregating the virtual shopping cart envisions two sections in the cart. The first is for items that have to be purchased in the course of the immediate session; the second compartment could be a wish list that comprises items that customers will consider paying for during a future session. This segregation bears the potential to create the perfect shopping cart experience because it removes pressure from online consumers, while keeping the shopping cart active for use at a later date. We note that the said wish list is a fluid construct because customers can mark all variety of merchandise for inclusion in the said list. Businesses can offer customers the liberty to edit the items in the online wish list before they arrive at a purchase decision. It can be said that the wish list is a strategy to spur future sales because most online customers are likely to consider the wish list items for purchase when they log in at a future date. The said wish list also offers businesses a chance to assess and re-assess customers’ online behaviour and their shopping habits. The information can be pooled to create detailed customer profiles which can be used for the purposes of improving business services and practices.
The experience of shopping online can be made convenient for customers when the business considers adding certain functionalities to the online shopping cart. The functionalities can include a ‘freeze’ button, wherein the customer can suspend activities on the cart at any point during the shopping session. The rationale behind the said functionality is to afford the customer time off in an attempt to de-stress from an extended engagement with online activities. Businesses can view this as a step closer to crafting the perfect shopping cart experience, because this measure can showcase the human side of doing business and dispense with a pure dollars-and-cents approach to online shopping. However, a failsafe mechanism needs to be built into this approach that reminds customers by text message when they spend an inordinate amount of time away from the shopping cart. We may note that this tactic is an equivalent of customers taking time off shopping in a brick-and-mortar shopping mall (or a retail showroom) to rest and rejuvenate before resuming the shopping expedition.
In the preceding paragraphs, we have surveyed some of the techniques that can be deployed by e-commerce merchants to fashion the perfect shopping cart experience for their customers. One of the primary objectives of business innovation is to defeat the competition and the aforesaid tactics can help merchants to achieve just that. Merchants are aware that the shopping cart remains one of the less glamorous aspects of their business, but we must bear in mind that the shopping cart represents the ‘last mile’ and is crucial in securing the customers’ dollars. Innovation in designing new online shopping carts can help to create satisfied customers that will continue to conduct business in the future. The gains are tangible and therefore, significant thought and effort must be invested to refine and perfect the customer experience in terms of designing functionalities into online shopping carts.
