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Case Study: E-commerce Site - The Order Form
Ecommerce Site Makeover 5
The order form uses various templates to prompt the customer to enter the appropriate information, depending on the product category. While several products only require the customer to enter a quantity, others (such as the invitations) have several options and the templates are much more detailed.
When a customer first enters the order form, they are asked to enter their email address. An entry is made in an orders database and a link emailed to them in case they need to finish the order later.
Once that happens, the order is saved any time the customer requests, and automatically every time they change pages, minimizing the chance that any order information will be lost. In the first version of the order form, sessions were used to keep the customer logged in. However, some customers complained about being timed out (though they were able to resume their order using the link emailed to them). In order to prevent this, sessions (which typically expire after 15 minutes) were replaced by cookies with a much longer time limit.
The new order form provides extensive error checking only when the customer requests it, and before they submit their finalized order. This makes the process much less intrusive for the customer, allowing them to start entering information for one product, continue shopping, then finish the original item later. If there are errors when they try to submit their order, they are told exactly what they are and can easily go back to the specific item to make changes.
Many products allow the customer to add customized text and the site provides several examples which customers can edit. The old order form required them to fill out several fields, then would replace placeholder text in the examples with their entries. Every field was required even if a particular example didn't use it, and the customer could not do anything else until all fields were filled in. The new order form replaced that process with error checking that simply looks for the placeholders before they submit their order and alerts the customer if it finds any. They are not forced to fill out data fields they won’t need, or prevented from adding new items to their order before the current one is correctly completed.
Once a customer submits their order, all items are checked one last time for errors. If there are none, they are asked to enter their billing and shipping information. They can still change their mind and continue shopping, or enter the information and finalize their order. Once the order is finalized and submitted, a detailed confirmation email is sent to both the customer and the store.
The store can process the order (though not the payment) from their copy of the confirmation letter, or use the order management section of the administrative back-end.
The orders database provides useful information above and beyond the customer contact and order information. For example, it stores the date and time an order is started and finalized, allowing us to see how long it takes people to complete orders for various products, how often they are ordering at hours the store doesn’t provide telephone support, and how many start an order but never submit it. This can be used to determine whether or not some of the product templates need to be modified, how much help should be available on-line, whether or not telephone support should be expanded, what the drop-off rate is for customers who start but do not complete an order, etc. In combination with site statistics and web analytics, it provides useful information to help improve ease-of-use for customers and increase sales.
Order Form - showing some of the options available.
