IA for Shopping & Shopping Baskets Li Cao School of Information The University of Texas at Austin

Outline Introduction History of E-commerce Why do people like shopping online? The techniques which make online shopping possible The IA principles for the design of the shopping website The principles for the design of the shopping basket Conclusion

Introduction Over recent years, the Web has been developed from a simple browser to a multi-functional network place. When it comes to building a successful website for shopping.

History of E-commerce 1984: EDI (electronic data interchange), was standardized through ASC X12. 1992: Mosaic web-browser was introduced. 1994: Netscape was introduced with Secure Sockets Layer technology. 1995: two biggest names in e-commerce - Amazon.com and eBay.com. 1998: DSL allows quicker access and a persistent connection to the Internet. 2000: the moratorium on Internet taxes was extended.

Why do People like Online Shopping Convenience 84% Saves time 72% Avoids crowds 64% Allows more time to research 61% Lower prices 60% no salespeople involved 55%

The Techniques which make online shopping possible The web developer has no built-in method for tracking a user or remembering data from one page to the next. Two main methods for tracking data: cookies and sessions. The difference between a session and a cookie; A cookie --- stores data on the client’s side (user’s machine) A session --- stores data on the server

The IA Principles for the Design of the shopping website Differentiate your site from the others. (Duyne, Landay, & Hong, 2002) Give customers effective browsing and searching tools. Ease the purchase process. Ease the customers’ security concern. Provide a link to your “easy return policy” at an easy-to-find place on every page of you site. Several methods to promote sales in your site. Cross-selling Up-selling Personalized recommendations

Cross-selling promoting accessories related to the current choice.

Up-selling promoting a better or more expensive version of the current choice

Recommendation Community

The IA Principles for the design of the Shopping Basket Make the shopping basket easy to find Provide the shopping basket with necessary features Save items for further purchasing. Number the pages during the checkout process Order forms should be as simple as possible to help users to complete them quickly and without confusion. Security is always customers’ big concern.

Conclusion Information architecture is the art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002). Information architecture can also be applied to help users to accomplish several commercial tasks.