When creating an e-commerce business, one of the most important decisions you have to make is choosing between a shopping cart and an order page. That’s because the one you choose will affect your sales results. And if you choose the wrong one, you will lose customers and sales.
You cannot make a sale until the customer submits the order. A persuasive landing page and compelling sales copy are vital to making the prospect want to buy. But it’s just as important to have a smooth ordering process that helps close the sale.
Any point within this ordering process can result in potential customers not buying anything. For example, if they find a detour or something unexpected, they can quickly lose interest and not buy.
To close the sale, the ordering process must confirm the offer to keep them excited. Also, fill out the order form quickly and easily.
The difference between a shopping cart and an order page
In online marketing, a shopping cart is part of e-commerce software that allows website visitors to select items to purchase. It can be integrated with a small or large catalog of items, each with a unique price.
The shopping cart can allow customers to choose different characteristics, such as size or color, in addition to quantity. Then at checkout, there is a form to collect the customer’s name and address, as well as billing and shipping information.
An order page contains a summary confirmation of the offer. In addition to a form that collects the name and address of the customer, as well as billing and shipping information.
Depending on your software, both the shopping cart and the order page can offer a wide range of functions. These can include integration with an online payment gateway, such as Paypal or Stripe. In addition, product quantity, shipping, real-time price calculation and data encryption when submitting the order.
But while both can facilitate a sale, the order page has three great benefits to getting the potential customer to buy. The following are 3 reasons why it triumphs over shopping carts for most types of products and services.
Advantage n. Order Page # 1 – Sell Speed
Once you get a potential customer to want to buy, you should do so as quickly as possible. That’s because doubt can quickly enter the consumer’s mind and make them hesitate to buy.
Perhaps the biggest difference between a shopping cart and an order page is the number of clicks and pages the consumer encounters. A shopping cart may require from one to more than 6 or more clicks that take the consumer to different pages to enter information. Pages may take time to load. The number of clicks and pages, plus the time it takes to complete the process, are the main reasons why there are so many abandoned shopping carts.
However, an order page has everything on one landing page. So that the consumer can quickly follow the information, usually from top to bottom, enter the requested information and click a single button throughout the process to submit their order.
Advantage n. Order Page # 2 – Persuasive Content
A shopping cart is bulky with respect to the design and information that is displayed. However, the information displayed is objective. The longer the consumer watches this, the more likely it is that their emotional enthusiasm for the product or service will diminish.
Order pages, on the other hand, can start with persuasive content that confirms the offer. So when the consumer completes the order form, they are more likely to have an emotional connection to the purchase of the product or service. Emotion is what sells. The longer you can keep the consumer emotionally engaged with your product, the more likely you are to close the sale.
Advantage n. Order Page # 3: Personalization
The shopping carts are one size fits all. Each consumer uses the same cart with the same content to select the specific products or services and the quantities they want to buy. There is little or nothing personalized for each client.
Order pages can be customized for each customer based on the information in their contact record or the specific landing page they visited. Personalized content can increase sales conversion. Thus, you can not only make the customer happy, but also your wallet.
In short, shopping carts and order pages allow consumers to shop and merchants to earn sales. However, order pages have 3 distinct benefits that can lead to higher sales conversion. They also take less time to close the sale and results in fewer contacts leaving the checkout process.
Plus, they can drive sales conversion with persuasive content that keeps the consumer emotionally engaged with your product or service. And they can include personalized content that further improves customer satisfaction and higher sales conversion.
