How to entice a greater number of e-shoppers to click the “submit-order” button.

By Rob Yoegel

Another way to help close the sale is to identify product availability. This should come before the customer confirms his or her order. “Inventory counts,” says Africa. “Don’t make the user go through a whole order only to tell her at the very end that you don’t have the product.”

Office-supply merchant Staples (www.staples.com) offers inventory availability checks by ZIP code. The Staples site works with existing inventory management systems to determine product availability and delivery times for customers. Staples’ officials had to work out some bugs in the early stages to ensure customers understood the process. It seems that some customers originally thought Staples was implementing a way to capture demographic data.