5 ms·

Ask HN: Do we still need Shopping carts for online stores?

5 points by sc90 12y ago

xtrumanx 12y ago
Would be nice if you explained what prompted you to ask that question.
- sc90 12y ago
  I think the design was inspired by Skeuomorphism, early online retailers looked at brick and mortar stores and just copy pasted the whole experience.
VLM 12y ago
Google says an alternative doesn't exist. The closest thing I can think of is Amazon subscribe and save and my experiences with online food delivery. I wish electronics sellers like digikey / mouser / jameco had a super saver shipping option like "send me one box of stuff per month and add this to my next box, or whenever you feel like shipping stuff out." Sooner or later someone's going to get B2B chummy with UPS or fedex and make a deal for super cheap rates at a super slow speed and for some situations thats just fine. Conceptually its almost a cart its just you never complete the order you just let nature take its course and it sends itself. Or you might be thinking of time kind of ebay like concept where there is no concept of "an order" its just "an item" that happened to sell. So buy 10 things make 10 single item orders. Which I imagine would make the shipping companies very happy.
Alupis 12y ago
What is your proposed alternative? I run a few ecommerce stores, and I can tell you, there is a lot of "magic" that happens in the "view cart" page. Chances to upsell more products/services, inform users they qualify for a discount (or need to add X more dollars to obtain the discount), pre-check shipping rates, etc. All of that is in addition to ensuring the proper quantity and all the right products are in the cart before hitting the checkout page. The checkout page you want to be as simple as possible. Users are turned off by clutter on the checkout page, ie. displaying all the cart products again, too many boxes to fill in, etc. So you clutter the shopping cart page, and declutter the checkout page. On the view cart page, we can see why a users bails on the order more clearly as well. Did they leave our site after putting in their zip and clicking the shipping estimator? Did they bail because their coupon code didn't work? On the checkout page, these things can get muddied by other criteria such as too much info to fill in (shipping and billing address, CC info, etc). I'd argue shopping carts are a necessity.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
iSloth 12y ago
I don't really see any alternative (yet) that can supply the functionality that the customers and business actually want, for example I like that I can add loads of things into a basket and then sort everything out when I'm ready to buy etc, and businesses probably like the fact they can ship everything in one big item and save on shipping. There's a few other methods out there like one click purchases and subscription based models but these are filling a very specific requirement and don't really fit most models.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
Until amazon's patent expires, the answer's probably "yes".
- Alupis 12y ago
  Amazon's system works like it does because any single customer-side transaction can likely be multiple merchant-side transactions (most sales on amazon are not from amazon directly, but 3rd party sellers). With that said, even Amazon.com has a shopping cart.
  - GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
    I meant the one-click thing.
LarryMade2 12y ago
I find cart useful when ordering, sometimes I have a budget and the cart lets me throw in everything I want then I pare it down to my budget.
MalcolmDiggs 12y ago
I think it's likely that a few years down the road: purchasing something online will be more like clicking a "like" or "follow" button, and less akin to a shopping cart. There are some sites experimenting with this kind of idea already. But those changes are likely to gain traction in parallel with e-wallets. Once users are used to having an ephemeral payment device attached to their online identities, it will be simple to hook into those payment devices without needing users to create a separate account on your site, add their payment info, or add items to a shopping cart. Little by little, we'll get there.
- Alupis 12y ago
  Unless you're buying single items, it's not very practical to not have a shopping cart. Sometimes you need to add things to the cart, several things, then review them before the final checkout. Also, from a merchant standpoint, I'd rather have a single order with multiple line items instead of multiple orders of single line items for the same person. Sure, we can try to guess the user's intention and attempt to concatenate orders together to save both the customer and ourselves on shipping as well as warehouse labor, but this becomes a significant burden (of which would get passed to the customer in the form of increased costs). Add items to cart --> review cart for proper quantities and everything you want --> checkout. It's a pretty natural flow as it is.

5 points by sc90 12y ago

xtrumanx 12y ago

Would be nice if you explained what prompted you to ask that question.

sc90 12y ago
I think the design was inspired by Skeuomorphism, early online retailers looked at brick and mortar stores and just copy pasted the whole experience.

VLM 12y ago

Google says an alternative doesn't exist. The closest thing I can think of is Amazon subscribe and save and my experiences with online food delivery. I wish electronics sellers like digikey / mouser / jameco had a super saver shipping option like "send me one box of stuff per month and add this to my next box, or whenever you feel like shipping stuff out." Sooner or later someone's going to get B2B chummy with UPS or fedex and make a deal for super cheap rates at a super slow speed and for some situations thats just fine. Conceptually its almost a cart its just you never complete the order you just let nature take its course and it sends itself. Or you might be thinking of time kind of ebay like concept where there is no concept of "an order" its just "an item" that happened to sell. So buy 10 things make 10 single item orders. Which I imagine would make the shipping companies very happy.

Alupis 12y ago

What is your proposed alternative? I run a few ecommerce stores, and I can tell you, there is a lot of "magic" that happens in the "view cart" page. Chances to upsell more products/services, inform users they qualify for a discount (or need to add X more dollars to obtain the discount), pre-check shipping rates, etc. All of that is in addition to ensuring the proper quantity and all the right products are in the cart before hitting the checkout page. The checkout page you want to be as simple as possible. Users are turned off by clutter on the checkout page, ie. displaying all the cart products again, too many boxes to fill in, etc. So you clutter the shopping cart page, and declutter the checkout page. On the view cart page, we can see why a users bails on the order more clearly as well. Did they leave our site after putting in their zip and clicking the shipping estimator? Did they bail because their coupon code didn't work? On the checkout page, these things can get muddied by other criteria such as too much info to fill in (shipping and billing address, CC info, etc). I'd argue shopping carts are a necessity.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

iSloth 12y ago

I don't really see any alternative (yet) that can supply the functionality that the customers and business actually want, for example I like that I can add loads of things into a basket and then sort everything out when I'm ready to buy etc, and businesses probably like the fact they can ship everything in one big item and save on shipping. There's a few other methods out there like one click purchases and subscription based models but these are filling a very specific requirement and don't really fit most models.

GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago

Until amazon's patent expires, the answer's probably "yes".

Alupis 12y ago
Amazon's system works like it does because any single customer-side transaction can likely be multiple merchant-side transactions (most sales on amazon are not from amazon directly, but 3rd party sellers). With that said, even Amazon.com has a shopping cart.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  I meant the one-click thing.

LarryMade2 12y ago

I find cart useful when ordering, sometimes I have a budget and the cart lets me throw in everything I want then I pare it down to my budget.

MalcolmDiggs 12y ago

I think it's likely that a few years down the road: purchasing something online will be more like clicking a "like" or "follow" button, and less akin to a shopping cart. There are some sites experimenting with this kind of idea already. But those changes are likely to gain traction in parallel with e-wallets. Once users are used to having an ephemeral payment device attached to their online identities, it will be simple to hook into those payment devices without needing users to create a separate account on your site, add their payment info, or add items to a shopping cart. Little by little, we'll get there.

Alupis 12y ago
Unless you're buying single items, it's not very practical to not have a shopping cart. Sometimes you need to add things to the cart, several things, then review them before the final checkout. Also, from a merchant standpoint, I'd rather have a single order with multiple line items instead of multiple orders of single line items for the same person. Sure, we can try to guess the user's intention and attempt to concatenate orders together to save both the customer and ourselves on shipping as well as warehouse labor, but this becomes a significant burden (of which would get passed to the customer in the form of increased costs). Add items to cart --> review cart for proper quantities and everything you want --> checkout. It's a pretty natural flow as it is.