Fine-tune Your Ordering System to Encourage Sales

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It may seem like a small matter, but you need to make sure that your ordering system is clear and intuitive, or you'll lose sales from people who give up in frustration and disgust. Studies have shown that the more clicks required to complete a task, the fewer people end up completing it. Try to get from product to order completion in as few clicks as possible. Here's one possible short sequence:

1. Product (click "place in cart" button)
2. Shopping cart (click to finalize order)
3. Billing and Shipping Information and Credit Card Information on an SSL secure webpage (Submit to complete order)
4. "Thank you for your order" page (with a confirmation e-mail sent automatically to the purchaser).

I've seen some ordering systems that take screen after screen to complete the order, causing most customers to flee long before they're close to completing the checkout process. :-) If your shopping cart system doesn't have open code, there may not be too much you can do, but watch for this when you're selecting shopping cart software.

Make these items easily available when the shopper is ready to check out.

• Shipping costs and policies.
• Guarantees and return policies
• International shipping policies

Your customer is looking for a hassle free order. The easier he believes it is to return a wrong or damaged product, the more comfortable he is in ordering. Use what business guru Jay Abraham calls "risk reversal" to take the risk away from your shopper and entirely on the merchant. Your sales rate will respond nicely, and you'll be pleasantly surprised not to find a big rush of returns.

Finally, have some friends order from your system with you watching but not talking. Instead ask them to verbalize what they're wondering or thinking. Then take their feedback to improve your system until a novice can move through it quickly and intuitively.