Continue Shopping Choices

[bamboo]

Have an intuitive choice on the continue shopping button such as
Continue shopping in section A
Continue shopping in section B
Search for similar products

etc, etc

Going to the last product page is counter intuitive and leads to confusion in the customers mind which is always a bad thing in my experience!

[Mike Hughes]

I can't see the advantage of this so maybe you can expand on it?

Going to the last product page is counter intuitive

It does seem intuitive to me. I'd be very confused if a cart suddenly took me someplace else rather than back to where I'd been.

Of course you can add in extra navigation on the cart page if you want, but doesn't your normal navigation give the customer all the options you're after?

Maybe you just want to change the 'continue shopping' text to something along the lines of 'return to product page' and add some text about using the navigation menu to go to a new section if desired.

All the sections, etc are fixed so there's no need for actinic to dynamically generate them for you.

Mike

[leehack]

Aren't the sections down the left hand side of your site already. I'm not so sure that it is confusing being returned to the page I left, that seems quite logical to me. I might want a few products off the same page for example,

[Sean Williams]

Going to the last product page is counter intuitive

I have the opposite view - returning to the page you were on means you know where you are.
I hate sites that take you back to Home or a promotional page after leaving the cart view because then you have to work your way back up the breadcrumb trail ....
In fact, being a grumpy so-and-so, I usually leave a site that does that

[TraceyHand]

In fact, being a grumpy so-and-so

I am SO looking forwards to meeting you at the conference, Sean

[pinbrook]

do you have bounce delay set to zero.

Even after 10 years of developing in actinic, i still get confused when the view cart bounces me automatically, i then start to wonder if my stuff got added to cart.

setting the bouce to zero means people have to pro actively choose to continue shopping, then it seems quite ok to go back to where you where - cos you know where that was and maybe there's a 2nd item on that page that you want.

[Sean Williams]

I am SO looking forwards to meeting you at the conference, Sean

I fear you'll be disappointed Tracey - I couldn't hold a candle to Mal

[Sean Williams]

i still get confused when the view cart bounces me automatically, i then start to wonder if my stuff got added to cart..

Another pet hate of mine.

Oh happy day - two potential rants for me and both in the same thread!

[TraceyHand]

Another pet hate of mine.

Oh happy day - two potential rants for me and both in the same thread!

LOLOLOL
keep 'em coming!

I also agree. I removed the bounce delay from my carts for the same reason. If the customer is distracted when the bounce happens, it's very easy to miss the whole cart altogether!

[bamboo]

Yes bounce page is set to zero.

I have discovered that a lot of my potential customers get confused when Actinic takes them straight back to the "product they have just placed in their shopping cart page".
As they want to "continue shopping" they would prefer to have a choice of pages where they want to go next hence my request to have the different options listed in my first post.

In the real world once you have put tomato sauce into the shopping basket you do not return to the "tomato sauce shelf" to continue shopping do you?

Giving people a choice of where they want to go to next after adding something to the shopping cart shows them that the site operator has thought about the process.
Lets face it there are already superfluous choices on the shopping cart page anyway.
I have yet to have a customer who saves a shopping cart for later retrieval. That's in almost eight years of online trading!

I have loads of customer who keep the shopping cart open whilst comparing prices/delivery charges/colours/offers etc with other sites but they are never saved.

The trouble with using "yourself" as the "customer" model is that "you" know how to buy things online and are completely OK with it.
You are also so infused with the "Actinic Way" that it blinds you to better more intuitive ways that put more profit into your business.
Most people do not order regularly from one particular shop, even Amazon customers shop elsewhere, and are easily confused by the plethora of different shopping cart systems out there.

For instance how many of you keep the "cancel button" on on the shopping cart pages ?
Talk about giving a customer an excuse not to order with you. Once they are in the checkout process you have to get them to the payment page as quickly and as smoothly as possible. Actinic's checkout process is it's weakest point as is proven by the many hacks available on this forum that try to improve it.
Go look at a site to see how slick it should be.

I recommend you all go read, if you don't already, http://www.getelastic.com as a start point in understanding what customers really want from the online shopping experience.

If you really can't be bothered then just go to this category http://www.getelastic.com/category/s...rt-abandonment as it is a fine distillation of much of the other research I have gone through and will truly open your eyes to what the only people that really matter, your potential customers, really want.

[Rich Brady]

If I've miss interpreted the tone of you post then I apologise, but you seem to have come back a little on the offensive after people have posted here to help.

It seems that the general opinion of the other forum members is that what you want to do is not necessary. Lee has already said that all of your product sections are listed on the LHS so if the customer wants to move on he/she can.

In reference to your "real world" shopping analogy, if I'd been looking to buy tomato sauce I may also be in the market for brown sauce, mustard or indeed mayonnaise which are usually on the adjacent shelves.

[leehack]

[Mike Hughes]

In the real world once you have put tomato sauce into the shopping basket you do not return to the "tomato sauce shelf" to continue shopping do you?

In the real world once you've put tomato sauce in the basket you'll find you are still at the tomato sauce shelf. You then decide where you want to go from your current location.

I can only think that maybe you consider the cart a location while the rest of us see it as the something to store goods in for purchase that is location independent. Much like a real shopping basket or trolley.

If you do see the cart as a location then the existing navigation should be used. You should stick to a common navigation to avoid confusing customers.

Maybe we won't agree on this and that's fine with me. You can make your website do whatever you want.

Mike

[dave_finlayson]

Go look at a site to see how slick it should be.

The continue shopping button on the M****** (starred out to save CD the hassle) demo installation does exactly as Actinic does, takes you back to the product page you were just on.

Some of your customers may want the choice of where to go after they enter the basket but personally I just think more options in there will just confuse the large majority. As the guys have said, savvy customers will find everything they need on the page to take them where they want to go, the rest will use the continue shopping customer as I suspect they know exactly where this will take them.

[dave_finlayson]

PS Is it just me who doesn't get the M****** checkout. With all the slidey up and down sections I think most people would find it more confusing and more of a chore than a multi page checkout. Maybe I'm just missing the point.