You're right - if you take a user direct to the checkout, you are effectively encouraging them to buy just one item. If, when they add the item to the basket, you keep them on the shopping page in some way (doesn't have to be ajax), then you are making it much easier for them to continue adding other items to their basket.
The danger is in the details - if you don't emphasise what's happened (e.g. via a yellow fade) and you don't make the call to action strong enough, then they could sit there thinking "what do I do now?" and your conversion rate could suffer. You imply that direct-to-checkout is a more "standard" design pattern than stay-on-page. I don't think this is true - AFAIK people use the design pattern that's most suited to the likely shopping behaviour. On amazon, people are likely to want to buy multiple items, and so the site supports that behavior. On, say, concert ticket sites, you are probably only going to buy tickets for one event, so they immediately funnel you into the upsell / checkout process. I'd be interested to know what others have to say on this... Harry ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
