Get a Quick Internet Marketing Lesson From Walmart – Add to Cart Button

We’ve all been to Walmart and we all know what shopping looks like in such a place. The way the sales process is built (I mean the ability to freely walk around the shop with a shopping cart) is no coincidence, and you can be sure that it would have been completely rebuilt a long time ago if it hadn’t been bringing results on a daily basis.

Many things can be adapted into online marketing but it’s worth to start with one simple step which will explode your sales as soon as today.

If your buy button does not contain the text “add to cart” then you’re leaving monies on the table. Just change it ASAP and wait for magic to happen.

Why “add to cart” is the best possible text to be placed on a buy button

Take a look at what Amazon and Best Buy have to say about buy buttons:

…But wait a minute, what does any of this have to do with Walmart?

Traditional markets were the ones which have set the standards for modern shopping. Introducing things like shopping carts and giving you the possibility to freely move around the store. Instead of forcing you to talk to a single cashier behind the counter.

Imagine a situation slightly different from the one you’re in, every time you’re doing some shopping…

Imagine you walk in to Walmart. You slowly walk down the aisles. You stop by a shelf with beverages. A bottle with a fresh orange juice catches your eye. You take it in your hand and read the label to make sure that the juice isn’t made from a concentrate. Then, all of the sudden, a cashier appears and asks if you’re going to buy this juice because if you are then you need to pay for it at once. This kind of situation would seem like a very odd one to you, and it would probably discourage you from doing any shopping.

If we were to transfer such a situation to the internet then the role of the insistent cashier would have been taken by a button with a text like “buy now”, “buy” or “order now” on it. This kind of text creates much bigger commitment than simply inviting someone to put something in his shopping cart. That’s why the “add to cart” text creates a much bigger click through rate than anything else.

When you are in a real store you like to look at various products on the shelves. Some of them you put in your shopping cart with a firm intention of buying, and others only to make the final decision later (whether you really want them or not). You’re familiar with the sales process in places like Walmart, you understand it and feel comfortable with it. It seems that you have the full control over what and how you want to buy.

While trying to sell something on the internet, one of the most important things is to keep the customer comfortable. The second a slightest doubt appears in his mind you can kiss the sale goodbye because stress does not favor shopping… especially on the internet.

Internet gives people the possibility to do certain actions much faster than it would have been possible in the real world. If, while being in the middle of shopping at the mall, you were to decide that something has upset you and you want to leave, then it would take you one to maybe even five minutes to actually leave the mall. If you want to leave an online store, you can do it in less than one second. The conclusion is that you have to make sure that your website is as friendly and intuitive as humanly possible.

That’s why you should take action right now and change the text on your buy button to “add to cart” if you haven’t done so already. This is the kind of request that every customer is used to, the request that they’re expecting. A customer is set that way by years of doing shopping at various malls. This is not something that can be changed easily. Adding something to a cart will seem natural to them. On the other hand “buying” and “ordering” won’t be nearly as natural at this stage, so these kinds of buttons will have much lover chance of being clicked.

BUT

There’s a downside … but not even a real one

The truth is that someone who clicks a button labeled “buy now” is usually sure about the fact that they want to actually buy something.

Someone who clicks “add to cart” doesn’t have to be sure about anything. They’re only expressing their interest in a certain product, and in the end they might as well delete it from their order.

The outcome of using an “add to cart” button is the fact that the cart abandonment rates will go up. Nevertheless, it’s not something you need to actually worry about because, at the end of the day, the total number of happy customers who have bought something from you will be higher than it would have been with a “buy now” button.

It’s the principle of small steps… It’s always easier to convince someone to (in the right order): enter the store, walk down the aisles, take a look at the products, add some of them to a cart, head to the cashier, and finally pay. It is much more difficult to convince someone to: enter the store, immediately head to the cashier and just throw some money at him.

That’s why a much bigger number of people sauntering around your online store with their carts full of stuff (even though some of those people will abandon their carts somewhere in the process) will result in a bigger number of paying customers. The numbers game is in your favor here.

Now the bad news. The text on your button is usually not enough to hope for a sale…

What about the button’s appearance?

The way a button looks like is nearly as important as the text placed on it.

Many questions arise here: What color? What size? Simple or flashy? Where should it be placed? Frame or no frame? What font? What color of the font?

Those are the questions I will answer in the next post about buttons, so tune in.

What is your opinion on finding the perfect text for a buy button?

Let me know in the comments. Maybe you’ve found something even better than “add to cart”?

Here’s a list of articles you may also enjoy:

• Call to Action Buttons: Examples and Best Practices – Call to action in web design — and in user experience (UX) in particular — is a term used for elements in a web page that solicit an action from the user…
• Add to Cart Button Showcase Vandelay Design Blog – This post is part of e-commerce week, which features e-commerce related content on DesignM. ag and the Vandelay Design blog, as well as e-commerce design inspiration at CartFrenzy. As you look at various e-commerce websites you will notice a lot of variety in buttons that are used by visitors to add an item to their shopping cart.
• 107 Add to Cart Buttons of the Top Online Retailers « Get Elastic … – Add to Cart buttons – they may be small, but no online retail store can do without them. These little, rectangular, sometimes colorful clickables connect the product to the shopping cart and are an extension of your branding. …
• Design Patterns: Download Buttons – In the era of Web 2.0 download-buttons are becoming more and more important. Grey and simple few years ago, now they’ve become bigger, more colourful and come in dozens of variations…
• The top 13.5 buttons of all time | Social Collective – On the back of this historic milestone, we strapped on our digital boots and when stomping through the internet to fine the best buttons of all time. Our criteria was simple: Functionailty: What does it do? Style: How cool does it look? …