single to multi-purchase pages

[Mickey Crocker]

This is just basically a question to end my curiosity. But is there an advantage to having a separate buy page for each product? For example, on Dexterity's buy page (that I remember) you have check boxes and could just check the products you would like to purchase all at once. This may intrigue a customer to make a few more purchases then he/she may have planned to when they entered the purchase page.

However, I have seen a few new sites lately that tend to take away this advantage by making a separate purchase page for each product. What is the advantage to that? There most be something, because even PopCap Games is doing it.

After thinking about it for a while, the only reason I can come up with is for simplicity’s sake. So that the "not so computer savvy" user will be less confused by a single product purchase page compared to a multi-purchase page. However, I can't see that effecting sales nearly as much as not having a multi-purchase page.

[ErikH2000]

I don't have anything useful to add, but I'm also fairly interested in this since my partner is making order pages now and we're talking about putting t-shirts and posters as extra items to optionally add to the order. It's an interesting observation, and I'm hoping other people comment on it. Is anybody here convinced the one-product order page has merit? Obviously if you only have one product, it makes some sense. ;)

Maybe PopCap decided they lost more sales from a complicated or "greedy" order form than they gained from add-on sales. Maybe they are just running a test and it will go back to multi-product later.

-Erik

[Mark Sheeky]

I think that how nice and neat the page looks is the most important factor. One product per page might look neater. Certainly, a large number of products squeezed onto a page (20+) might make people devalue them. Sometimes one whole website has just one product!

Mark
Cornutopia Games
http://www.cornutopia.net

[ErikH2000]

I know I tend to feel slightly irritated when I am on a page for one specific game, click the buy link for that game and then get taken to an order-all-products page that seemingly forgot that I was interested in just one of the products. It does seem better to focus on what the customer was interested in and keep it simple. It is like the website is listening to you and being responsive instead of being stupid or pursuing its own agenda.

Maybe it is a good strategy to have one product on the order page and a little upsell thing that will optionally take you to an order page showing all the products. It might offer some discount like "Order 2 games and get $5 off! _See available games_."

-Erik

[Cartman]

One strategy may be to do observer what a major online retailer is doing. For example, look at Amazon's web page. They've spent tons of money on usability tests to find out how not to annoy users when they are making purchases but allow them to know about additional items they might want.

Sometimes it's easier to look at a successful business and just look at what you think makes their choices better.

[ErikH2000]

Sometimes it's easier to look at a successful business and just look at what you think makes their choices better.
Fair enough, although sometimes big, successful companies are wrong in their decisions, or the decisions they make only apply to them.

-Erik

[DavidRM]

I've found Plimus's "Additional Charges" feature a simple, inobstrusive way to provide "impulse sale" options. The order page is for a single product, but listed below the product are checkboxes with additional items/add-ons that can be purchased in conjunction with the main product.

Not everyone will choose to buy the extras, but some people do, and asking in this way doesn't seem to offend any one.

-David