Common design for the shopping cart of the Business-to-consumer website

For most web sites, the shopping cart is the site of the throat, the order is white silver, all the money must flow through the shopping cart, shopping cart can not be lost. Excellent shopping cart design requires at least two missions: one is to facilitate the user to buy more goods to pay more money, and the second is to help users to take care of the goods to be purchased, convenient next time to dig silver.

Shopping cart is a more complex system, usually with orders, merchandise, inventory, membership and promotional modules have an ambiguous relationship, is also regarded as far-reaching. Therefore, it is not easy to direct your programmer to modify the shopping cart without knowing the cart.

Having said so much, get to the point. This article is longer, please watch patiently.

What do you call a shopping cart?

A traditional shopping cart usually refers to a trolley in a supermarket where a customer temporarily stores a selected item before clearing it. The first shopping cart was invented by American Sylvan Goldman in June 1937, and then the shopping cart became popular in various countries. In China, we are familiar with the "Wal-Mart" as the representative of the "American Shopping Cart" and "7-eleven" as the representative of the "Japanese shopping cart."

Shopping Cart exists The value is: 1, easy to customers in the purchase of goods to the settlement before the completion of the storage of goods, the hands of the liberation of customers. In fact, let users buy more goods, improve customer unit price. 2, not only to store and buy good merchandise, but also with the function of baby car, so that parents with children to facilitate shopping. 3, Wal-Mart in 2007 took the lead in the supermarket in the use of radio frequency technology (RFID), each product labeled electronic tags, into the shopping cart in the merchandise can be tracked, the settlement without scanning every item, shopping cart after a special scanning device can calculate the final total price. Shopping carts are widely used to analyze the user's buying behavior.

Online shopping cart, where the user clicks the "Add to Shopping Cart" button to click the "Check Out" button. It's worth noting that the shopping cart does not just refer to "Shopping cart page"!

Probably 60 years after the invention of the traditional shopping cart, in 1995, the American Mark Mumma (web site designer) invented the first online Shopping cart (which refers to the shopping system), and the inventor of the shopping cart that this article mentions, There is no textual research on the line (the history of this section of the Welcome to contact me: qq:80411154). April 1999, another American Juliette Harrington invented a patent: a virtual shopping cart that enables online users to purchase goods and services from different websites with a generic virtual cart, and then pay only in one place (if you remember correctly, 2008 Amazon website uses the patent, can be viewed in detail: https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/business/cba/shoppingcart#features.

The main function of online shopping cart is: 1, similar to the traditional store, convenient for users to select more than one item to settle. 2, acting as a temporary favorites function. 3. For businesses, shopping carts are one of the best places to sell to users.

When can you consider not shopping cart?

In traditional small supermarkets and shops there is no shopping cart (or shopping basket), because of the short distance, small space and other reasons. There is no shopping cart in the electric city or the computer city, is it? Because the delivery & customer things buy less? Another feature that corresponds to an online shopping cart is "buy now", which means you can only select one or a set of items to pay at a time. Theoretically there is no shopping cart is able to go through the flow of the current ebay and Taobao is only "buy immediately" no shopping cart.

Consider "buy Now" instead of the shopping cart as follows:

1, SKU number less, that year's weight loss products "green thin" official website is very typical;

2, a single commodity structure, such as only selling cups, do not sell other products, your users will only buy a cup in most cases (of course, you can sell through a set of functional combination of many pieces, but do not need a shopping cart).

3, through the data analysis, found that the average number of users order items unlimited close to 1 (of course, this related to the lack of joint sales may).

4, you very much expect your users to buy one item at a time, do not dawdle!

What are the shopping cart entrances?

A shopping cart entrance is a way to add a product to a shopping cart. Common: Add items to the shopping cart in the Product Details page, add items to the shopping cart in the Favorites folder, add the items to the shopping cart in the purchase order, add the items to the shopping cart in the canceled order, and add the related items of the shopping cart page directly to the shopping cart.

Because shopping carts are directly related to inventory and promotions, there are different processing logic for different entrances. Here are 2 examples, I do not expand to write:

1, to have successfully completed the order, click "Buy Again" or "rejoin the shopping cart", if some or all of the goods do not have inventory how to deal with? The original gift is not sent now, how to deal with?

2, the same use in the canceled orders, if there is a product is deleted or the next frame, how to deal with? If the quantity currently available for purchase is less than the original order, what should be handled?

At the same time, we need to consider how different shopping cart portals interact. As in the Product Details page, after the item is added to the shopping cart, is it directly into the shopping cart? Mini Cart Pull tips? Pop-up layer lets the user choose to go to the shopping cart or continue to purchase? Which approach is right for your site? The entrance processing of the shopping cart I'm writing here to provide a wonderful article for you to continue to study: http://blog.csdn.net/youshandeyang/article/details/5316568

The exit of the shopping cart

There must be an entrance, I explained the export of the shopping cart as: the way to remove the shopping cart from the goods. There are three kinds of common ways.

1, Shopping cart merchandise is carried to settle, and the successful submission of orders; This is the most common way to focus on a problem here: if the pre-login item A is added to the shopping cart, the user's shopping cart is actually logged in with the product B and C. Click "Go to Checkout" in the shopping cart, ask the user to log in, the product that is carried to settle after login is a, or a+b+c? or let the user choose by themselves (Shopex's approach)?

2, Shopping cart merchandise was deleted;

3. Shopping cart items are added to the Favorites folder. If the item in the cart can be added to the Favorites folder, does the item record in the cart be deleted at the same time after it is added to the Favorites folder?

The following into the interpretation of the specific functions of the stage, design before the function to understand what the core function of the product, what is the expansion function? What extensions can be done on core functions, and what extensions can be extended. First understand the main role of shopping cart: 1, convenient for users to carry a number of goods together to settle; 2. Temporary commodity storage. and shopping cart secondary functions are: 1, let users buy more things, improve customer unit price (site values are different, and some sites expect users to quickly enter the next step to settle).

Shopping Cart core function & extension function

See the figure below, the requirements of the shopping cart core function are deduced from the user's requirement. The following figure is a shopping cart should meet the functional needs, of course, according to their own site can increase or decrease.

Shopping Cart extended function & extension function

The text is too lazy to write, or drawing fast.

The status of the shopping cart

This is a more easily overlooked point, in general, users often see the status of the shopping cart is logged in before or after login shopping cart has merchandise. In fact, also include before or after login shopping cart for empty, before login or after login shopping cart has merchandise (some or all) is under the shelf, inventory is zero status.

Pre-logon Shopping cart has merchandise: this is a very good understanding of the state, for members have also enjoyed membership discounts of the site, to consider the problem is before and after the entry of the commodity prices may not be consistent, if the use of coupons in the shopping cart, before the login can be used?

After logging in the shopping cart has merchandise: This state is the most common, do not say

Pre-logon Shopping cart is empty: the first thing to consider is, if the shopping cart does not have merchandise, whether to allow users to click into the shopping cart page? If so, what are the shopping carts to do? I summarized the following, common tips are:

1 tells the user that the shopping cart is empty and gives a quick link to return to the home page to continue shopping

2 tells the user not to log in May cause the shopping cart to be empty, prompts the user to log in;

3 recommend the product to the user.

The shopping cart is empty after logging in: 2nd and 3rd before the login is empty

Pre-logon or post-logon shopping cart merchandise All or part of the bottom shelf or inventory is zero: This is a very special state, at least 2 problems to solve:

1 tell the user that the goods are under the shelf or inventory is zero;

2 Can the user continue to checkout? What do users need to do if they are prevented from settling?

How to save the shopping cart data

This paragraph is a bit of a technical topic, but a closer look is better understood. Before reading this text, you need to understand the "cookie, session and database" three concepts. Of course, I do not explain here, go to Google yourself. The saving of the shopping cart data is a very detailed experience, but it is also very important, in fact, the way the data is stored directly affects the user's experience of storing the goods. Users often have so 3 questions:

1, website A, why I joined the shopping cart merchandise, the second landing on the site, the product disappeared but disappeared?

2, website B, why do I change a computer, the goods in the cart is gone?

3, website C, I did not go to the shopping cart to add merchandise ah, who used my computer ah?

According to the actual situation of each website, the following conditions are generally considered:

1, before the login, to the shopping cart added merchandise, the product data should be saved where? cookie or Session mode?

2, after the login, to the shopping cart added merchandise, the product data should be saved in where? cookie or session mode or database? How long?

3, home who has not logged in state to the shopping cart added merchandise, save the way for a, and later logged in, Save the way for B. What kind of relationship A and B should be. What is the relationship between A and B after the user exits the login, and what kind of processing logic?

4, if the use of cookies to save the data, assuming that the user browser disabled cookies, how to deal with?

5. Suppose to save the data with a cookie, and in what case the data stored by the cookie will be purged by the system (attention is system rather than human)?

6. If you use the database to save the shopping cart data, under what circumstances will the data stored in the database be purged by the system?

At the same time, the data can be combined to save the way to consider shopping cart data marketing:

1, a registered user to give up the shopping cart, can be considered after one weeks to trigger the message to remind each other?

2, if the shopping cart data to be cleared by the system, before this, whether to consider mail to remind users?

3, if the user to your email alert indifferent, whether to consider to a point of preferential seduction? If you give coupons, give discounts!

Mini Shopping Cart

More of the consideration of interaction, information organization and interface issues, here is slightly.

Finally, send a mental map, welcome to the spread

Some omissions or small mistakes, have been too lazy to modify, have good ideas please q me: 80411154

Extracurricular thinking:

1, why the new Beijing-East shopping cart page reference Taobao practices increased check box (product check)?

2, why Taobao can only save 20 items before login, login can save 50 products? And after the Jingdong login if you want to save the goods need to actively click "Hosting"?

Author: Old Worm