Is My Order Process Too Complex?

I would appreciate it if a few of you fine people would look at my site www.thecablestation.com and tell me if my order process is too complex? I have had customers tell me that it is when canceling their orders. I have noticed a lot of shopping cart abandonment. What can I do more to streamline than what I have done already?

Does your customer usually buy one item or multiple different items??? The reason I ask is when I added an item to your cart I stayed on the same page and the alert message showed up on top of the page. I believe a lot of people would wonder why nothing happened when they added a product to their cart. Customer need to be told what to do otherwise they will take no action.

I would recommend:
Taking the customer to the shopping cart page when they add an item to the cart.
Look into Easy Login and Sign up mod. It allows the customer to enter their information on one page (new customers and old customers)
You might want to look into the One page checkout or the new Ajax checkout
I didn't create an account so that's all I can see as a visitor.

micmed:

I would appreciate it if a few of you fine people would look at my site www.thecablestation.com and tell me if my order process is too complex? I have had customers tell me that it is when canceling their orders. I have noticed a lot of shopping cart abandonment. What can I do more to streamline than what I have done already?

I got hung up on the customer registration page because there is no place to enter my telephone number yet if I go to "Continue" an error message pops up telling me I need at least 10 digits in m phone number.

Also, I am no fan of Captcha boxes when signing up to buy something. I can understand there use on contest entries and such, but really, what purpose does it serve on a customer sign up page?

Ron

micmed:

I would appreciate it if a few of you fine people would look at my site www.thecablestation.com and tell me if my order process is too complex? I have had customers tell me that it is when canceling their orders. I have noticed a lot of shopping cart abandonment. What can I do more to streamline than what I have done already?
I believe you have the answer already????

I have had customers tell me that it is when canceling their orders. I have noticed a lot of shopping cart abandonment.

What are they saying? This is the answer.

~Melanie

Ron, I was updating some things when you were on the site. Probably why you got the errors. I turned captcha off on the signup. I tried installing easy sign up, but it was messing with my template pretty bad.

Melanie, they are not telling me anything specific. I didn't think mine was any worse that some others out there.

micmed:

Ron, I was updating some things when you were on the site. Probably why you got the errors. I turned captcha off on the signup. I tried installing easy sign up, but it was messing with my template pretty bad.

micmed,

Check and make sure you have a telephone number box on the registration page. With the error trapping customers would be forced to abandon the cart. That may be the problem.

The customer registration page seems pretty normal (same as mine on three websites). Didn't get further into checkout because of the telephone number issue. Will check it later today and let you know.

Ron

micmed:

Melanie, they are not telling me anything specific. I didn't think mine was any worse that some others out there.

Login page displays incorrectly in FF

Newsletter subscribe checked by default is going to get your email server blacklisted.

Turn off your sidebars once in checkout to reduce abandonment and distraction

PayPal alone w/o a proper processor will cause much greater abandonment as well.

Turn OFF the order confirmation so they are taken directly to PayPal and miss the confusing step where a shopper likely thinks you forgot to collect their payment information.

~Melanie

mprough:

Login page displays incorrectly in FF
I just upgraded FEC and something has changed in the CSS. I do not know what it is.

Newsletter subscribe checked by default is going to get your email server blacklisted.I did not know that - Fixed

Turn off your sidebars once in checkout to reduce abandonment and distractionAny guidance?

PayPal alone w/o a proper processor will cause much greater abandonment as well.Plan to change in the near future.

Turn OFF the order confirmation so they are taken directly to PayPal and miss the confusing step where a shopper likely thinks you forgot to collect their payment information.???

Thanks for your help.

I just upgraded FEC and something has changed in the CSS. I do not know what it is.

login.css

Turn off your sidebars once in checkout to reduce abandonment and distraction

includes/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/common/tpl_main_page.php
add the following, near the top and directly after */

//add page names that you wantto disable left and right columns
   $center_column_only = array('login','checkout','fec_confirmation','account','logoff');
   // the following IF statement can be duplicated/modified as needed to set additional flags
     if (in_array($current_page_base,$center_column_only) ) {
          $flag_disable_right = true;
          $flag_disable_left = true;
     }

Turn OFF the order confirmation so they are taken directly to PayPal and miss the confusing step where a shopper likely thinks you forgot to collect their payment information.
Configuration >> Fast and Easy Checkout Configuration

One Page Checkout set to true

That way they will be taken directly to PayPal instead of the additional step on the end.

~Melanie

-FEC CSS issue resolved

-tpl_main_page.php mod messes up the template. Kind of the same problem that I had with Google checkout.

-One Page Checkout set to true, but the confirmation page shows briefly before continuing automatically to PayPal.

Thanks again for your help.

Melanie...thanks for that bit of code for turning off the sideboxes...much easier than other tweaks I have tried.

micmed:

I would appreciate it if a few of you fine people would look at my site www.thecablestation.com and tell me if my order process is too complex? I have had customers tell me that it is when canceling their orders. I have noticed a lot of shopping cart abandonment. What can I do more to streamline than what I have done already?

micmed:

You have been busy! Site looks good to me now. Most of the issues I and others have commented on appear to be fixed.
I went through the registration, created an order for a KVM over Cat5e and got through to the Payment page. It functions the same as my sites. (btw I like your colored buttons).

I don't feel it is overly complex. A one page checkout is always better, but I haven't come across a bug free add-on yet or I would give it a try.

Your site looks great to me..... and I'll probably be back to buy later on. I too would echo that a regular credit card merchant account will do wonders for your sales volume. It has been expensive to set up in the past, but there is a lot of competition now and you can get contracts with no setup and cancelation fees now.

You can delete the customer Ron -TEST TEST. That's me testing your site.

Ron

Thanks for the feedback Ron.

I am still seeing the Confirmation Page just for a few seconds before it forwards to PayPal. Very distracting!