Continue Shopping Means What?
Sep 28th, 2009 by admin
Youve added your item to your cart, but youre not finished shopping. So, you look for the Continue Shopping link to thrust you back toto what? The product page? The category page? The home page?
Picture of Continue Shopping Means What? [source:getelastic.com]
Most sites dont give you a clue where youll end up. GrokDotCom mentioned this in Groks Biggest Gripes about the ecommerce experience, and an informal survey of the authors contemporaries revealed 100% of them found this irritating.
Ive observed a number of different ways to handle Continue Shopping navigation in my online shopping escapades. I decided to check out 100 of the top internet retailers and round up the methods used and the frequency of each. The following is a rundown on Continue Shopping options, frequency and examples for your inspiration, curiosity and comments.
Love or hate Web 2.0, 17 out of 100 retailers use an AJAX popup to indicate an item has been added to the cart. Though this is nice and convenient to keep the shopper on the product page, it can be hard for inexperienced online shoppers to notice whats happened. Some sites are more obvious than others.
Patagonia and Moosejaw Mountaineering use a roll-out notice in the top right of the product page. You must click to close this box, but both retailers place the close button in the same place, with the same icon. This is Moosejaws:
The above examples remain until the customer closes the box. HP, PC Connection, Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle Outfitters use a now-you-see-it, now-you-dont approach. A box rolls out and disappears which could confuse customers.
I almost never want to go back to the home page once Ive meandered into a site. If Im considering adding another item to my cart, the home page usually takes me too far back in the qualification process. Imagine youre shopping in a grocery store for milk. You put the milk in your cart, stare at your cart to make sure its actually there, then decide youre going to get a few more things. Except the store lifts you from the dairy department and plunks you back at the entrance. Joy!
Still this is one of the most common destinations.
Walmart reminds you where you were beside the Continue Shopping button, so you know where youre going. Nice touch.
Karmaloop shows a page of Top Sellers in Brand and Category with an option to shop more (back to the category page) or check out.
I love how Nine Wests makes it nice and obvious with an overlay over the product. Creative and effective:
The Continue Shopping button leads back to the category page.
A frequent destination is back to the product page. This seems like an odd choice, unless you expect the customer wants to re-evaluate the item or check out cross-sell options.
These are examples of very subtle indicators of cart update. Can you find the shopping cart summary in each example? Look closely
PacSun has a neat feature, after you click the cart button, it changes to Adding To Bag. Then a red sentence appears notifying you the items added.
At JC Penney, first challenge is to find the cart button!
Its not that hard to see the notification in this next screenshot, though. But I bet many customers dont notice it.
These ones arent that bad but still very subtle perhaps too subtle.
This is my favorite approach to Continue Shopping giving the customer a choice where to go next.
Yep, you saw right. That was a ferret beret in the cart. Dont knock it till ya try it.
I love this example because you see options appear after you click the Continue Shopping button. You dont clutter the page with a bunch of links for customers ready to check out, and you give your customer a choice where to go next.
Lets kick off with Amazon, because Amazon was likely the pioneer of this design. The shopping cart appears along the right side after an item is added to the cart, and the customer is presented with a page of cross-sells, without a Continue Shopping button.
I have to chuckle at the Oh, you like jewelry? People who like jewelry also like DVDs. Add a DVD! But I bet it works. Supermarkets only wish they could sell DVDs in the impulse buy display instead of Bic lighters and US magazines.
RepairClinic has a very unique approach. Every time you add an item to your cart, it adds a thumbnail to the side.
Cabelas is similar with a mini-cart and cross-sells. But its not clear whether youre in the cart or not. It says Item Added (would you have noticed without the red arrow?) but also shows item detail which cart pages usually do. The continue shopping link is very understated (and wordy) Back to Destination Polarized Sunglasses. I like it because its clear where the link is going, but personally I scan for a continue shopping button so this is easy to overlook.
I was expecting to catch a few more like this, but there was only one retailer that took me to a login page. But its Costco so maybe theres a good reason?
Northern Tools Continue Shopping link is hard to find. Can you spot it?
But the destination is unique as it takes you to a sitemap-like catalog of products. Not a bad idea.
Personally I like Amazons method of showing a mini-cart off to the side, and presenting cross-sells in a few different categories (providing they are relevant). Karmaloops Top Sellers in {Brand} and Top Sellers in {Category} appeals to me. [source:getelastic.com]
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