Today’s digital marketplace is quickly becoming crowded. Whereas in the past, certain retailers may have felt that they could still connect with their core customer base without having to go online, now, a website is as vital to company’s survival as any other of their business tools. Yet where once being online put you ahead of the curve, now your mere presence there isn’t near enough to guarantee success. Thus, taking advantage of updates such as the latest AJAX cart extension is required in order to enhance the online customer experience.
The Need for Efficient Checkout Functionality
Oftentimes, far too much attention is paid to pulling visitors in with elaborate visuals and ads as soon as they enter a site. While not downplaying the importance of these features, it’s important to remember that all of the pretty pictures in the world can’t overcome a bad shopping experience. Even if you’re able to lure customers into browsing through your inventory and even into making selections, you can still lose them if your site doesn’t maintain an efficient flow on the backend. How frustrating would it be to lose a potential customer at the very point of conversion simply because he or she found completing the transaction to be cumbersome?
Not to worry; even if your online checkout process has had its issues, there are tools that can help improve it. One such tool is the GoMage ProCart Cart Extension for Magento. This extension can allow you to better customize your customer shopping cart in order to help your visitors with the selection and management of their intended purchases. This increased efficiency can not only lead to better conversion rates, but also increased sales and customer retention.
Benefits that the GoMage ProCart Offers
How does the GoMage ProCart succeed at doing this? A quick look at some of the benefits that it offers provides that answer:
- Eliminating extra steps for the customer: Most online shopping cart programming prompts the same function when a customer makes a selection: It redirects them to the shopping cart page to review their choice. This often deters customers from buying multiple items during a single visit to the site simply because they don’t enjoy having to constantly find their way back to the product page. The GoMage ProCart extension eliminates this by not requiring a page reload after the customer places an item in the shopping cart. Instead, it simply shows the item added to the cart in page header. Thus, customers can continue shopping without having to review every selection they make. If you so choose, the GoMage ProCart even allows you to bypass the shopping cart page altogether. You can choose to disable it so that customers go right to the checkout page when they’re done making their selections. This gives them less chance to rethink their purchases and remove items from the cart.
- Improved selection control: While it may seem like a simple thing, having to go to multiple pages to edit a selection can annoy customers. Oftentimes, they’ll make a selection and add an item to the cart, only to then see it available in another color or style which they prefer. Or they may simply choose to up the item quantity. Either way, the GoMage ProCart extension allows them to do all of that from a simple pop-up window that redirects them back to the product page where they make those changes.
- Prolonging the time spent on product pages: Typically, after a customer makes a selection, they’re redirected to the shopping cart page and then asked if they want to continue shopping. Many will simply choose to proceed to checkout to avoid having to click back to the product pages. The GoMage ProCart, however, keeps the customer on the product page even after adding an item to the cart. Instead of redirecting them, it shows a pop-up window confirming the selection and then asking if the customer wants to continue shopping or checkout. You can even enable functionality that closes that window automatically after a few seconds so as to not interrupt the customer’s shopping.
To remain relevant in the ecommerce market, you have to take full advantage of all of the tools and technologies available to you. This can often be a challenge, however, if you’re expertise does not lie in web design and development. It’s at these times when having a partner that specializes in e-commerce really pays off. Such a resource can help to ensure that not only are you made aware of the latest technological advances in the industry, but are also able to easily integrate them into your site. We here at 121 eCommerce can be such a resource. Through our collaborative efforts, you’ll be able to enjoy the primary benefit that these updates were designed for: increased customer conversion rates.
