One Page Checkout: Love it? Hate it? Fine with it?

We love OPC and Guest Checkout.  We used to get phone calls every day with people that needed help ordering from our shop (PC 2.76p).  Those are thankfully gone now with PC 4.0.

I agree that the option to create an account to log into existing account should not be part of the OPC. Many things could be happening here in the background, and it is less psychologically traumatizing.

I'd go so far as claiming this isn't really part of the OPC; it's more about recognizing who a customer is before getting into that process.

For example, if someone shopping as a wholesaler hadn't logged in yet, that would change a lot of what is displayed in the OPC.

Maybe more important is this option itself and this stage of process so's new customers aren't overwhelmed.

caughlan wrote: wow - I'll have to assume there was some mystery post other than mine that you're referring to. [edit: referring to the EI comments]... Makes me afraid to contribute to the conversations guys.

@caughlan

You are making good contributions here; please don't shy away from contributing further.

There are many threads on issues related to this topic. That might be why you are feeling that more has been said here on this than you see on this thread. Also, I think EI is responding more generally here than to just you even on this thread.

The checkout process is super crucial. It takes a log of work to build a good site, populate it with product, optimize is for SEO/SEM/SMM, get the traffic and then convert that traffic to sales. That last part is hugely dependent upon the checkout process -- real shame to see all of that effort to get a client to this point and then maybe lose them. So, all the input we that can be gathered here on this thread will definitely help to make the next upgrade of PC all that much better.

earlyimp wrote: Who says that a really long page is preferable? ... But suggesting that the current layout should be dropped and replaced by a long checkout page that will force customers to perform substantial vertical scrolling while trying to checkout is not correct in our view and not something that we will implement.

While I've a few clients that confuse the long page/all fields revealed layout with One Page Checkout theory/practice and they seem to think that would be preferable, I disagree with them and agree with EI here. While I don't have studies at my finger tips at the moment, I've read them and I've as many other clients that know that the full set of fields is psychologically traumatizing to end-users and does lead to abandoned carts.

However, I think the issue here should be about balance. Merchants have a concern here, and I think some of them are not unjustified. Comparing with Gap.com is not exactly an apples to apples comparison as they have business rules that make things simpler for them whereas PC has to handle a very complex array or possible business rules. So it is different that than Gap.com and is a bit different from one PC merchant to the next.

There are many cost/benefit analyses to be made here in an effort to move towards a bit better balance that leads to the most "abandoned cart resistant" OPC in this context. I hope that this thread contributes ideas that can make a more refined version that approaches a better ideal of what this PC OPC can be.

Bottom line: I think it is indeed all going in the right direction, but it also could use some refinement to dial it in really well. There's probably not going to be any way to make everyone completely happy, but then PC is a generic shopping cart meant to handles ALL KINDS of business models, so it would be unreasonable to expect this from it.

Merchants that aren't completely happy with what results from this have the option to get PC developers involved who can customize the functionality to match their preferred behavior based upon their specific business rules.

I'm going to listen more here on this thread and then do a new top to bottom evaluation and add my recommendations next week (I hope; time provided).

When looking carefully at the accordion/continue issue I realize its more the layout of the default design that's bothering me - ie there's no indication of whats ahead and what's been done, the page layout is confusing etc. And that might just be a matter of altering the actual design and layout rather than the AJAX itself. One site I saw says "use this address?" instead of 'continue' and its those little things that might make the page a whole lot friendlier - maybe it just needs a designer/ecommerce-guru's touch.