Ever wondered what is a shopping basket and how that relates to online and offline shopping? We give a quick overview about the differences and how they relate to e-commerce and physical retail.
Offline shopping baskets are purely and simply something you put items in that you want to purchase. You walk those items up to the till – and you buy. Straightforward, known, universally accepted. The same acceptance can be said for online, but there are differences.
Online shopping baskets are a little different
Shopping basket software is an integral part of an e-commerce website. It allows visitors to a shopping site to select items for purchase and has many names. It can be a Shopping cart, basket, bag and others. Importantly it reflects what you might experience in a retail store.
The software allows online shoppers to accumulate a list of items for purchase, ready to check out. The software typically calculates a total for the order, delivery costs, discounts, tax and other items.
How does an online shopping basket differ from the experience in a retail store?
There are a number of key differences between the two:
- There is far more visibility online in the sense that you can check the price right away and the cost. This can be a bad thing of course – knowing the full price might be a barrier to purchase
- Online shopping baskets have a memory. You can often leave a website, come back and the items are still in the basket. this creates an opportunity to run cart abandonment programs
- There are fewer opportunities for shoppers to confer with retail staff members when you are online. Its self service.
- It might seem obvious, but a physical shopping basket has weight and can be seen by the people around you. An online shopping basket – you don’t fell the weight and people can’t see what you have in your basket. It’s private
These fundamental differences in online to offline shopping baskets have an implication: online shopping baskets convert at a much lower rate and they have far lower average order values.
It’s interesting that the online shopping basket hasn’t changed much since the days it launched on the Internet. It’s certainly been refined and optimised to improve conversion, but fundamentally it has the same construct in spited if it’s inability to convert. It is universally accepted despite its limitations.
Confer with operate shopping baskets over live stream shopping. Livestream Shopping acts as a bridge between retail and online.
