ecommerce

Effort increases as a visible goal gets nearer, and artificial early progress accelerates the whole journey.

Law · Motivation

More options can reduce satisfaction and completion, but the effect is much less reliable than the popular version suggests.

Psychology · Decision making

People look to others' behaviour when deciding, especially under uncertainty.

Psychology · Influence

Narrowing a large set by attributes, which is what makes large catalogues navigable at all.

Pattern · Finding

Putting options side by side so differences can be seen rather than remembered.

Pattern · Deciding

User-contributed evaluations, which build trust only when the negative ones are visible too.

Pattern · Trust

The most scrutinised form in any product: total cost visible early, card entry forgiving, and failure states specific.

Pattern · Commerce

A retailer required registration before purchase to build its customer database, and lost the sales it was trying to capture data about.

Case study · Ecommerce

Product pages, cart and checkout, covering the decisions that determine whether people buy.

Checklist · Ecommerce