adding attributes at checkout

[weif]

Does anyone know of a way to add the ability to add attributes at checkout? Or some other way that the customer could add extra items during the checkout process?

The site in question is a florist and gift shop that delivers in the local area, and they want an additional reminder to their customers that they could add a plush toy, candy, coffee mugs, cute signs, etc to a floral arrangement.

A lot of these extra items are already in the system as "add-on" attributes on products, but the store owner thinks that more people will choose them if they are asked when they are selecting the shipping options...

And, of course, there would be an additional charge for adding these items to the order.

My initial thought is that the closest may be to make them featured products, and show the featured centerbox on the shopping cart page.

Thoughts?

[schoolboy]

To do this using "attributes" would be complex and possibly confusing to customers. Scott Wilson, (swguy) has a number of up-sell and cross-sell plugins that can be configured to incentivise additional purchases.

But fundamentally, the up-selling and cross-selling ought to happen BEFORE the checkout phase is reached, because at this point people are ready to conclude - rather than "adjust" what they are going to purchase. There is the risk that you could also DOWN-SELL, with people making a decision to REMOVE stuff and go for something cheaper...

This is all based on human behaviour, rather than the capability of the technology. The chronology of the purchase process (in any retail setting) is important to understand. If you look at how supermarkets do this, they do have "impulse purchase" teasers such as shelves of candy and trinkets at the till points, BUT they severely restrict these to certain items - and in general, these are items that may AUGMENT what they have already chosen - and are not IN ADDITION to what they have chosen. Items of candy in such locations will either be different from those on general shelves and are usually more expensive too, because if a customer (standing in a queue at the till point) decides to "swop" his candy bar for one at the till point, the retailer wants the new choice to have a better profit margin than the one the customer is leaving behind. Similarly, in electronics shops and toy shops (for example), you will see items like batteries on offer (toys, radios and electronic gadgets often need batteries) and many customers will be persuaded to add these to their basket (even if they already have some in their basket).

Cross-sell and up-sell WHILE they are in the main shop, where their INTENT is to pick products. By the time they get to checkout, you want them to CONCLUDE the sale (which is THEIR frame of mind too), and to distract them from this behavioural chronology can have negative results. Be careful of what you tempt people with at the checkout phase.

On most of our shops, we disable most distractions (side columns, banners, etc) and present the visitor ONLY with the login or checkout template. The objective is to get them to finalise the sale, and if they are not distracted by other stuff, they tend to do this more often.

[weif]

Schoolboy,

I completely follow what you are saying here, and I'll be stopping by the store to talk to the owner today. What they were looking for were things like "add a dozen chocolates to your arrangement" or the like. The owner is convinced that people don't see it when they add the product to the cart and that they would do so during checkout. But I think there's more of an issue that very few of their products have any ATTRIBUTES other than the "greeting card message."

[dbltoe]

You can always make them attributes on the product that HAVE to have an answer. The product can't be added without the customer making a selection. You would need to be careful just how many you added. Too many might turn the customer off. Please Select... and No Thanks would be two of the options with Please Select... as Display Only. http://gomagnetic.com/index.php?main...products_id=93 shows multiple use.

[mc12345678]

Schoolboy,

I completely follow what you are saying here, and I'll be stopping by the store to talk to the owner today. What they were looking for were things like "add a dozen chocolates to your arrangement" or the like. The owner is convinced that people don't see it when they add the product to the cart and that they would do so during checkout. But I think there's more of an issue that very few of their products have any ATTRIBUTES other than the "greeting card message."

Below is similar to schoolboy's post. Beat me in responding with the same/similar concept.


Could even add an attribute/option with the following option values

Chocolates:
Please select your chocolate choice... (Marked as default, display only, and sort order of 0 within the attributes controller)
Add a dozen (+X.XX)
Add 2 dozen (+Y.YY)
No chocolates, Thank You

Now with those 4 option, the customer is presented with perhaps a dropdown that defaults to the please select text and when adding the product to the cart, the customer should be notified that they are to make a selection of that option before moving onto the next action...

This way there is no "didn't see it" condition as a conscious selection must be made and the "no" text remains with the product through the process so that the customer could also have "second thoughts" and return to the selections of the product and modify their choice.

[schoolboy]

Here's something we did and I know it applies largely to our business, but boy... did it work".

Our core business is engraving - tags and ID discs mostly - for pets as well as people and objects. Here in the UK, it is legally mandatory for dogs to have a tag on their collars when they are in a public place. So, if you have a dog in the UK, it MUST have a tag on its collar if you take it outside your property.

Now... almost 30% of our pet tag sales are for REPLACEMENT tags - the dog somehow managed to rip the tag off the collar and it now lost - so we trade on this "unfortunate" fact.

On our PRODUCT INFO pages (for pet tags), just above the "Add to Cart" box, where customers specify quantity to add, we put a line:

"Consider a spare... SEE WHY" ...

(With the SEE WHY being a popup message). This popup alerts customers to the hassle of losing a pet tag and their legal obligation to have one, so we suggest that they order spares too. All they have to do is change the default quantity of "1" to a higher number. As 30% of our customers have just had the hassle of a lost tag, they hardly hesitate in increasing the quantity. We have had several customers go for 4 or 5 tags instead of just 1.

Within days of putting this popup on the Add To Cart area, we saw revenue increase by over 25% !!!

The ploy was picked up by many of our competitors who are now doing the same thing.

But the up-sell must happen BEFORE the cart is full and the customer ready to checkout. By putting this on the product info page, the customer is still in the frame of mind I spoke of earlier, and for us, that ploy works well. These days - 3 years after adding that popup, MOST people who buy pet tags from us buy 2 or 3...

[schoolboy]

Oh... I forgot to say... the "Consider a Spare" popup is one of the most visited pages according to our analytics.

[schoolboy]

Below is similar to schoolboy's post. Beat me in responding with the same/similar concept.


Could even add an attribute/option with the following option values

Chocolates:
Please select your chocolate choice... (Marked as default, display only, and sort order of 0 within the attributes controller)
Add a dozen (+X.XX)
Add 2 dozen (+Y.YY)
No chocolates, Thank You

Now with those 4 option, the customer is presented with perhaps a dropdown that defaults to the please select text and when adding the product to the cart, the customer should be notified that they are to make a selection of that option before moving onto the next action...

This way there is no "didn't see it" condition as a conscious selection must be made and the "no" text remains with the product through the process so that the customer could also have "second thoughts" and return to the selections of the product and modify their choice.

Absolutely right... and with attributes on the product info page, you can put images too... OK - so they are better as little thumbnails, but one can actually do some nifty tricks with the attributes COMMENTS areas. We changed the character (VARCHAR) limit for these fields in the dbase so we could put popup code links into the comments box. Again... the popup can showcase the "benefit" in a fairly large window without the shopper needing to move away from the product info page in question.

So as MC123456789 says... leverage the attribute areas on the product info pages because this is where the customer is MOST LIKELY to be influenced by up-sell.

[schoolboy]

Go see my SPARE TAG popup in action:-
https://tagmakers.co.uk/aluminium-pe...ld-heart-shape
Scroll down to add-to-cart and click the link : "Get a spare tag: More Info"