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

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   My dad hates the one page checkout. He argues that it's not one page when you have to press a continue button so many times. I agree, ditch the Ajax, it's just a gimmick. Give us a simple checkout form and use Ajax only for validation. One long page where a person can enter all of their info would br superior. 

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Brett Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 22-April-2008 Location: Phoenix, AZ Status: Offline Points: 89	Post Options Post Reply Quote Brett Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-April-2010 at 2:02pm
	My dad hates the one page checkout. He argues that it's not one page when you have to press a continue button so many times. I agree, ditch the Ajax, it's just a gimmick. Give us a simple checkout form and use Ajax only for validation. One long page where a person can enter all of their info would br superior.

Greg Dinger Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Certified ProductCart Developers Joined: 23-September-2006 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 238	Post Options Post Reply Quote Greg Dinger Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-April-2010 at 1:33pm
	Ben's comment about brain dead simple is why I went and found this image last night. http://www.businessballs.com/treeswing.htm I think that what the market may have been hoping for, versus what we ended up with, may have differed. To expand on Ben's analogy, it's really a 3-4 page process since the confirmation page then appears at the end. And clearly, altering OPC is one muthu-hubba more difficult than the legacy stuff. I miss the legacy approach.

benpate Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Groupie Joined: 15-February-2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 0	Post Options Post Reply Quote benpate Report Post Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-April-2010 at 1:11pm
	I have seen cart abandonement drop from 75% down to 60%. I think some of that could have resulted from fixing errors since we were running 3.051 and then upgraded to v4. As we do not have any errors showing in the error report but we use to have them everyday before. The biggest problem I have with OPC is that if you are running a payment gateway then its not really a true OPC. And if you are running offline payment processing then it would actually be considered a two-page checkout. login and OPC The second issue is that EI has not upgraded Google Analytics (GA) to the new Async code which allows for event tracking and other useful features. For me this is a must because you need to be able to track the sales funnel and see where people are dropping off. The previous checkout was very easy to setup the funnel in GA but the new OPC is not. If you dont mod anything then all you can see in the funnel is viewcart, opc, authorize, and orderComplete. Obviously, there are a lot of steps that occur in the OPC and you are blind as to whats happening there and where people are dropping off. I am in the process of implementing the new code now. I havent looked at the gap.com website and I am not sure who developed it but I personally would have looked elsewhere for inspiration. For example, amazon.com, buy.com, or elasticpath. Speaking of elasticpath, they have a VERY interesting case study that can be found here where the original version was very similar to the current OPC with offline payment processing. They call this a two-page checkout. I have no doubt that EI put a lot of thought and resources into creating the OPC, but I think that they may have put too much thought into making it cool and nifty instead of brain dead simple. I also agree with you Sean that modifying the OPC is much more difficult then the previous. With all that being said, I am still very happy with having chosen EI as our shopping cart provider
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Guests Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Guest	Post Options Post Reply Quote Guests Thanks(0) Quote Reply Posted: 02-April-2010 at 1:17am
	One of the major things EI tried to push forward with v4 is the One Page Checkout. Having consulted with them a bit on it, I know they really did their homework on OPC theory and that one of the exemplars in the industry they were comparing against is Gap.com (though one must keep in mind that the Gap is just one company with a lot of money with their very own business rules, while PC is a generic shopping cart system that must accommodate all kinds of possible business rules, so that makes a BIG difference in why PC v4 OPC is not just like the Gap.com). I think it is generally a good idea, and is definitely industry trend and in theory should mitigate against abandoned carts because of "form fatigue" (customer see too many fields at once) and because of posts backs between steps (having to keep submitting back to get to the next page; may take more time for some users or sites on overloaded shared servers, etc.). What is more, it's not truly OPC if one is using a payment gateway, as that would be extremely difficult to do the way PC integrates gateways, and changing that would be prohibitive given the scores of gateway integrations, not to mention those with custom gateway integrations PC doesn't support Out of the Box. Finally, I'd really rather not mix up OPC with Guest Checkout, as these are completely different issues, and v4.1 will address that (or for the "must get out of that now" crowd, our Guest Checkout Eliminator will tide you over). So, with all of that as intro, I'm really curious what feedback folks have one the v4 OPC. I'm curious because I've heard some folks says they've tracked an increase in abandoned carts since they upgraded. I find that surprising. Also, I've currently a client who keep sending me examples of things that are not even OPC, but he things they are because most of the fields are all open without needing to "continue" (not to be confused with causing a post back like on pre v4 PC stores). I'm sure that EI would be curious too as they are ramping up for the release of v4.1, no doubt. PS: It's also true that v4 OPC makes customizing even the smallest thing way more challenging for developers. Might be worth a different thread for feedback there.