Blogs

So we’ve been working with the crew at Elastic Path since late summer on a very cool application of Ajax to improve the conversion rates of their eCommerce platform for online shoppers. The goal was to reduce shopping cart abandonment by streamlining the check out process.

“As the moniker implies, Elastic Path announces a single-screen type
check out tool to combat the scourge of modern retailing – shopping
cart abandonment. Indeed, MarketingSherpa indicates nearly three out of
every five online shoppers abandon their shopping cart before finishing
the order.” More in Dave O’s post about it here.

So we worked with them to build a single page shopping cart and check out process, the feature is now appropriately named One Page. Now an online shopper can get through the entire check out process from one screen, as opposed to the usual 3-4 painful page reloads and tedious forms to fill out. We’ve provided all the basic ecommerce check out features in an easier to use format, such as contact and address info, shipping options and payment details. We’ve used a lot of nice real-time form validation such as email address and phone number checking. Then we’ve added some really slick functionality like in-line card editing, this allows a shopper to change their order details like quantity, size, color or other optins right from the check out screen and see the total update automagically.

There’s lots of Ajax goodies that we’ve put together to make this UI really shine. Some of the patterns include: accordion widgets, real-time form field validation, data upates, real-time calculations, subtle transition and fade effects. The whole is UI was built leveraging components from our Ajax framework and I’m excited to get it out in the wild. Performance and page weight (load time) was a huge factor for project success as this is a forward facing public web app as oppose to behind the firewall. eCommerce shoppers aren’t nearly as tolerant as corporate intranet users;-)

Jason and the Elastic Path crew are down in SF at the Mid-Market eTail conference this week, and Jason has the latest iteration of OnePage on his laptop, so if you’re in the area stop by their booth for a demo! Also they’ve put together a really slick One Page PDF Data Sheet here.

Screencast coming soon:)

Technorati Tags: ajax, ecommerce, elasticpath, ux, conversion, shoppingcart, abandonment, nitobi, service