26 February 2010
I was recently asked to work on some designs for a registration and checkout process. Now, I’m a responsible and thorough person, so I set out with my copy of LittleSnapper and a handful of URLs to document some best practices. Here’s what I learned.
You’re not so different
My scientific selection criteria for this study started and ended with the requirement that someone, recently-ish, had recommended the site. As a result, I looked at the checkout processes of Amazon, Apple, Dell, Gap, Ocado, and Tesco. Those sites cross into a few different industries, but their processes are essentially the same; if we take out the question of account-creation, a high-level model would look something like this:
And there are a few lessons we can take from that.
Ask for what you need, when you need it
Almost without exception, the sites asked for registration at the point that a user clicked ‘Checkout’; before that point, users are free to browse and shop uninterrupted. The exceptions to the rule are the two supermarkets in the study – Tesco and Ocado – who need to know more about you before they let you shop.
If you have to ask, don’t expect an answer
All of these sites have recognised that people giving you money trumps people giving you demographic information. When they interrupt a user’s shopping process to create an account, they make it as quick and painless as possible, and keep it focussed on shopping; most sites just ask for a name and some contact details and do it all under the heading of billing information.
You’ll also notice that most sites handle the account creation process without mentioning registration; it’s simply a question of being an existing customer or a new customer. There’s a great case study from Jared Spool in Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design about just how painful users find the idea of registration:
Without even knowing what was involved in registration, all the users who clicked on the button did so with a sense of despair. Many vocalized how the retailer only wanted their information to pester them with marketing messages they didn’t want.
Ocado is the only site here to ask for broader marketing information, and it has the good grace not to require a user to answer those questions. The form could use some design attention, but the sentiment is bearable; even better would be to put those questions into the account page and let users answer them later.
None of the sites asked the ridiculous questions that used to be on any self-respecting registration form: are you a farmer, fisher or builder.
Focus on selling
I was surprised to see that most sites used a basket page.
Personally, I hate these; I can’t remember ever finding anything useful in the cross-sell areas and I resent the interruption to my shopping. But they do give the sites a good opportunity to promote other products and, working on the assumption1 that most of the sites in the survey are attracting customers who are primarily buying one thing at a time, there’s no significant downside.
Once a user is in the checkout process, all this cross-selling drops away to put the focus squarely on completing the process. Amazon even kills its own navigation.
What to take away
If you are selling things, you only make money when someone buys them. If you’re going to force a user to create an account before they help you make money, make that process as quick and painless as possible. If, as these sites do, you combine it with your checkout process, the user only has to fill in a couple more fields at a point when they’re already in form-filling mode.
Whatever you do, don’t dial back the clock to 1999 and ask them to select their hobbies.
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At this point, I am abandoning any claim to science. There is nothing backing this up beyond personal experience and a guess that this financial crisis has dampened the online-shopping impulse ↩
All posts
February 2010
Checkout
I was recently asked to work on some designs for a registration and checkout process. Now, I’m a responsible and thorough person, so I set out with my copy of LittleSnapper and a handful of URLs to document some best practices. Here’s what I learned.
Steal right
It’s a good time to be a designer. In recent years, the appreciation of good design online has skyrocketed; these days, any client can list a string of inspiring sites that cover the range from beta-only social networks to supermarkets. And, thanks to greater recognition of the value of design in big companies, as well as the swarm of ‘hot design trends’ lists that pop up, our clients are more aware than ever of cutting-edge design elements.
But there’s a difference between being aware of good design elements and being able to create a good design.
My week in pies: Hard training
This week has been a rest week in my relentless bike training and, like any good rider, I’ve kept my eyes on the prize and found some creative ways to stay sharp even though I’ve been off the bike.
If you know as much about PRO cycling as I do (or if you read this post [...]
An open letter to Garmin
Dear Folks at Garmin,
Allow me to start by saying that the stuff you make is awesome. I love my Forerunner 305. I love my Edge 705. I love Garmin Connect. But, well, your Garmin Training Center could use some love.
In the hope that pointless moaning becomes more useful when accompanied by pictures, I’ve come up [...]
December 2009
Getting fit has never been so pretty
It seems like every time November rolls around, my fitness bug kicks into action. I’ve just finished planning next season (fingers, toes, arms and legs firmly crossed for a place in the Étape) and, because I can, I’ve been dallying with the various gizmos available to fitness-minded design nerd.
Mmm, purty.
November 2009
Things that caught my eye #3
This week’s sometimes-weekly summary of things I noticed on the internet things I wish we had in the UK.
October 2009
The joys of concept development
My job is fantastic. I get paid to sit and think of amazing things while I listen to music and chat with interesting people. When I put pen to paper, it’s to make something pretty. I rarely have to open Excel. And, unlike some fellow travellers, I get to feel like my work is a [...]
Things that caught my eye (#2)
This week’s sometimes-weekly summary of things I noticed on the internet.
Things that caught my eye (#1)
This week’s sometimes-weekly summary of things I noticed on the internet.
September 2009
Project (near) launch: Vodafone 360
A little over a year ago, I sold all my stuff and moved to Düsseldorf, where I lived in a flat that was painted mostly in peach and decorated exclusively in wicker. When I was there, I met lots of other people who had no business being in the city, and, together, we colonised a [...]
Meckin’ stuff: Beci’s Book of Birthday Booty
This is the first book I ever made that had the good grace to remain made for any period of time. It was a birthday present for my wife (before she became my wife and allowed me to stop doing things like this), and it was awesome.
It even had detachable pages.
July 2009
Moaning about multi-select
As with the last article in this category, you may want to tread lightly around this unless you have the same weirdly obsessive personality as me. We’re talking about multi-select, and the ways it works and doesn’t work on the desktop and on the web.
If it helps, it’s an interesting time to be thinking about [...]
The hackiest hack of them all
Tweaking OmniGraffle to make a nicer sitemap
February 2009
News sites have big heads
I’ll start this with a warning. You’re very unlikely to find this anywhere near as interesting as I do. It talks about pixels. It’s not exciting.
With that out of the way, here’s the thing. I know users scroll. Maybe you also know users scroll. Two types of people who don’t know that users scroll are [...]
December 2008
Passing the time when it’s colder
This weekend I will be taking part in The howies 36 hour Door to Door Bivvy Bag Challenge. This will involve taking a sleeping bag and a bivvy bag for a long walk, and sleeping in them on a hill when I get tired.
Everyone I’ve invited to join me has given me a funny look [...]
October 2008
Passing the time when it’s cold
Now that the clocks are back and the evenings are drawing in, my habitual evening pass-time of watching trains brush past my window is getting more difficult. So, after some head-scratching, I’ve come up with a few ways of keeping myself busy until it’s a reasonable time for me to get excited about Christmas again.
March 2008
Meckin’ stuff: Badges
I’ve been lusting (that’s right, lusting) for a badge press for years. In fact, this is one of the few things my sensible side has consistently managed to veto. So I was boyishly excited when I unwrapped my Christmas presents and found that my sister had bought one for me.
Here’s how I squander my time [...]
Meckin’ stuff: Books
Book making is one of the beautifully redundant things I do to recharge my batteries and fire up some creative spirit. It’s one of the only things I can think of where I get complete creative control of the final product, from the shape of the book, to the materials it’s made of, to the [...]
Twittering the Tube
I’ve found myself on the wrong end of some meaty tube delays over the past few days. So much so that I signed myself up for TFL’s free tube updates, which proceeded to get themselves eaten by my spam barrier at random, arrive when I was already on my way home, and would only tell [...]
