Web Design - Forms of Shopping Carts and Linking

As more and more people buy products or services through the websites, there is a competition among the websites to offer as many facilities to the prospective buyers as possible. Nowadays the aim of the web designers and the businesses on the internet is to facilitate the buyers and make the buying process as easy as possible. The facility of the shopping cart is one of the last stages in the presentation of the website but is very crucial for generating the revenue. If the prospective buyer does not find the shopping cart to be comfortable there are hardly any chances of the buyer revisiting the website or buying anything through it.

Forms of Shopping Carts:
There are two forms of shopping carts; one is the full page shopping cart and the other is the mini shopping cart. It is advisable to include both the kind of shopping carts in the web design. The full page shopping cart is located on a special shopping cart page. The location of the mini shopping cart is either the sidebar or over the page fold.

As the terminology used suggests the mini shopping cart occupies a small area of the screen while the full page shopping cart occupies the full screen. When you do the shopping, only limited information is displayed through the mini shopping cart, but when you click the link from the mini shopping cart to full page shopping cart, all the details including the details of the product, taxes, options of delivering the product or service, and facility of removal or addition of products get displayed on the screen.

The mini shopping cart should be also displayed on the full page shopping cart so that if not needed the visitor can go the mini shopping cart.

Linking:
Beside the mini shopping cart there should be an icon. The design of the icon should be such as to attract the attention of the visitor. When any visitor clicks the mini cart icon, he/she should be presented with the full page shopping cart. This implies that the linking of the mini shopping cart with the full page shopping cart should work perfectly.

There should be other links to facilitate the shopping as well as exit of the buyer from the website. If the visitor wants to continue shopping, there should be a link termed as "Continue Shopping". The visitor should be able to easily locate this link.

If the visitor wants to log out of the website then he/she should be able to easily find and click the link "Go to Checkout". Usually when the checkout or logout process is cumbersome the buyers get discouraged from revisiting or buying again through that particular website.

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