Turning a shopping basket into a wishlist

Some interesting research by marketing and technology company Amaze, in conjunction with the University of Glasgow, revealed that 87% of online shoppers place items into their shopping basket in order to work out total costs (taking into account things like delivery, VAT, special offers etc.) and compare prices with other online retailers. And interestingly, 74% of these potential customers claim to return to the shop with the best deal to make their purchase. This got me thinking: how many of those customers need to add the products they want to their basket again?

The whole ecommerce process can be a complicated business at the best of times, so making it easy for a customer to come back and complete an order after they've done their research is another challenge to consider. The solution is to turn the shopping basket into a wishlist.

What is a wishlist?

In it's simplest form, a wishlist is a list of links to web pages, usually specific products, that is accessed via a permanent URL.

How to turn a shopping basket into a wishlist

Saving a customer's basket contents so they can easily return and complete the purchase later on can be achieved in various ways. Here's three potential options:

1. 1.

   Let the browser session "remember" the shopping basket details

   This is the simplest approach because it involves no effort from the customer or developer and instead relies on the web browser's in-built session handling functionality. The downside though is if the customer closes their browser window (and doesn't have a session-saver installed) the basket contents will be lost

2. 2.

   Get their email address and send them log-in details

   Offer to save their basket as a wishlist. Ask for their email address and set them up with log-in details. They can then log-in, like any paying customer, to view their wishlists (and any other information you may want to show them).

   The big advantage to capturing their email address and painlessly adding them to your customer database is it then becomes possible to monitor their activity on site. For example, customers that don't log-in to view their wishlist after a certain period of time (say two or three days) could be sent an automatic reminder with a link to their account

3. 3.

   Use the shopping basket ID to generate a permanent URL

   Arguably the most appealing option (from the customer's perspective at least) is to provide a way to let customers access their wishlist without a log-in request.

   Assuming there is some sort of unique identification for each shopping basket instance it should be a simple case of generating a permanent URL based on this ID and displaying it to the customer on the page for them to bookmark for later, e.g. http://example.com/wishlists/12345

In an ideal world, all three options would be implemented, ensuring a greater chance of converting a casual window shopper into a paying customer.

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