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The Psychology of Shopping: Your Purchase Confirmation Page is Just as Important as Your Home Page
The Wall St. Journal graphic for the article shows that more recent memories (those on the right side) appear crisper—while older memories (those on the left side) appear fuzzier.
This is a purchase confirmation page in our shopping cart software. It is the last page a gift giver will see when giving a gift to, say, a couple getting married. The page would be better if it showed a picture of the wedding registry couple that will receive the gift, showed a handwritten "Thank you" message from the couple, and used other elements to conclude the purchase on a positive, high note.
An updated version of the purchase confirmation page displays a picture of the wedding registry couple and concludes the purchase on a more memorable note.
The print version of The Wall St. Journal article. We're often inspired by trends in other industries and then apply them to e-commerce.
The Psychology of Shopping: Your Purchase Confirmation Page is Just as Important as Your Home Page
There is a lot of psychology that goes into a positive shopping experience—including online shopping. I was reading in The Wall St. Journal about how to improve a vacation experience. The author encourages us to save the most enjoyable vacation part till the end of the trip because our mind is biased towards the most recent event. (In psychology, this is called the "recency effect.")When I read this, it made me wonder: what is the last experience a gift giver has on our site when they give a gift? Can we make it more memorable and positive?
I set about placing a test order on our demo store that we use for testing purchases. I spotted an area that we can make it better. On all the pages leading up to the purchase, we show the couple's picture and a handwritten note from them. But, on the purchase confirmation page, we don't. In other words, the most recent experience the gift giver had with our platform didn't show the registrant's face or their message—which we know customers like. We just show a picture-less white page with text. There is little emotional reward for the shopper after giving their gift.
We can do better than this.
Our update: I'm going to update our shopping cart experience so that we show the registrant's picture and message on the confirmation page. The last thing the gift giver sees will be a nice, big picture of, say, the wedding registry couple smiling. That is a memory that the gift giver wants to conclude their purchase with. They want to make the wedding registry couple happy—so let's show them the happy couple immediately after they give their gift online.
P.S. - We've written about ending experiences on a positive. Theme parks often end an evening with fireworks displays to take advantage of the recency effect.
Read the full article at The Wall St. Journal here:
https://www.wsj.com/lifestyle/travel/how-to-make-your-best-vacation-memories-last-according-to-science-0a24bfc4?st=Ef3pZf&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
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