Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

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sparrrow
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Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by sparrrow »

My custom shopping cart has a mini-cart visible in the header like most carts that tells the user how many items in the cart and the total value of the cart. Question is, how should the count of items be derived? Should I just count how many different items they have, or should I take quantity into consideration also?

So if the user is buying 50 units of widget A, should it say 1 item or 50?

PS - I asked this on Yahoo answers first and got nothin, so if you want 10 pts go here: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... ADLZFS&r=w
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onion2k
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by onion2k »

I think people expect to see the number of items they've added to the cart, so that would be 50 even if they had 50 of the same thing in the cart. Of course, if you sell things in packs of 50 then it'd only be 1 item.

It's actually quite a complicated problem.
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Christopher
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by Christopher »

I think when people think of "items in their cart" they think of the number of things that they added. That would be SKUs, not the sum of the quantities. I would show the quantity, unit cost and item total for each item line.
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papa
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by papa »

I would calculate total amount of item regardless if it was the same item. If you buy 10 white t-shirts and 1-packet of socks (containing 10 socks) I would display 11 items.
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aceconcepts
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by aceconcepts »

Whenever, i've worked on shopping site and used a "mini-cart" info tab in the header, I tend to calculate how many single items exists (e.g. 50xproduct a = 1 item) and I also calculate a basket total.

The basket total (£) usually helps shoppers recognise and determine the method used i.e. 1 x product = £10, whereas 50 x product a = £500
crazycoders
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by crazycoders »

Apply this to a real life scenario and you'll have your answer:
Lets say we are doing the groceries, if you want to go to the express lane that says 8 items, can you go there depending on the different scenario?

Scenario 1:
10 individual boxes of cherrios
No, you have more than 8 items (Sure you could defy the authority but it's not the point here)

Scenario 2:
7 boxes of cherrios
1 pack of 6 kleenex boxes
Yes, you only have 8 items in your cart....

I think i made my point
josh
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by josh »

crazycoders wrote:I think i made my point
That grocery stores and e-commerce are different contexts? Arborint is saying that in e-commerce people tend to think of "items:" as translating effectively to "this many different kinds of items", separate from item quantity, which can easily be displayed with more detail using an always on screen cart
Last edited by josh on Wed Oct 29, 2008 4:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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papa
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by papa »

That you like cherrios?
crazycoders
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by crazycoders »

They had a rebate on them :D
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papa
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by papa »

crazycoders wrote:They had a rebate on them :D
Couldn't help it. :)

But I do agree with you.
josh
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Re: Correct way to display count of items in shopping cart

Post by josh »

What if its a B2B application, selling wholesale goods, it wouldn't make sense to tell the customer they have 10s of thousands of items in their cart. Similarly in your grocery store example if you had a 3-pack of paper towels for instance, you'd still refer to that as 1 item. Conceptually on the web you could say 3 individually packaged rolls is really 1 3 pack, it doesn't really matter. For retail, basing the item count on the number of quantities makes more sense though I do agree. I guess the answer is make it do both!
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