TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Simplifying Web Checkouts

Simplifying Web Checkouts

Monty Solomon (monty@roscom.com)
Wed, 16 Feb 2005 23:22:05 -0500

Simplifying Web Checkouts

By BOB TEDESCHI

FOR many e-commerce sites, the shopping cart is where transactions go
to die.

About half of prospective customers bail out of their purchases
sometime after selecting products and before hitting the buy button,
according to Forrester Research, a technology consultant. That
phenomenon has prompted sites like TJMaxx.com and HomeGoods.com to
find new ways to shepherd customers smoothly through the checkout
process. As traditional retailers sharpen their online operations,
those kinds of improvements could be critical in winning business.

Take the TJX Companies, which owns T. J. Maxx, Marshalls and
HomeGoods, among others. Last fall the company opened online stores
for T. J. Maxx and HomeGoods, using a traditional checkout method that
makes users click through multiple screens while typing in shipping
information, credit card numbers and the like.

During the holiday season, both TJMaxx.com and HomeGoods.com tested a
new checkout system that lets customers use a single page for all
shipping and billing information. Fifty percent more customers
completed the one-page checkout process than finished the multipage
process.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/technology/14ecom.html?ex=1266037200&en=2e977cb22a040daa&ei=5090

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Read these, and other stories from the
New York Times each day on our free, no registration required website,
which is http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html
The news headlines are updated constantly, 24/7. PAT]

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