How can I make the online shopping experience more fun for my visitors?

Adding some levity during the e-commerce process is a great way to build trust and improve your online sales.

One example which springs to mind is Virgin, who have created an upbeat, fun and cheeky style to their online experience for users. I like their conversational style; it’s certainly not stuffy!

Here’s an example of their checkout process:

Here’s another example from Teefury. As soon as I saw it I smiled, as it was completely unexpected (and then shared it with my colleagues).

What I like about these examples is the disarming nature of the approach. If you can turn a frown upside down, I reckon you’re more than half way to securing a sale.

But you know, humour is a funny thing. Sometimes just when you think a gag is going to be hilarious, it can turn around and bite you – just look at Hey Hey it’s Wednesday.

So if you’re going to try a little humour, please test it out on some friends before you offer it the world.

Another really fun shopping experience I had the pleasure of trying out the other day was Plurchase – which, as they say, “lets you shop at your favourite stores with your friends”.

My colleague Liesl and I tried it and absolutely loved it.

You can invite friends along on your shopping trip and can all chat away as you browse through the site (shown at the bottom of the purple side bar).

Seriously, keep an eye on this thing because I have a feeling it could be big and it could change the way online retailers model their stores. At the moment our online retail stores are really geared towards just individuals browsing their websites.

This is a potentially game changing product, because it now allows two or more people to shop together online, commenting on products, and asking for advice as they go.

Notwithstanding any privacy issues, I wonder if they’ll ever allow website owners the chat information. If they were able to do that, I think this could also become a brilliant usability tool.

Let’s make shopping fun!

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Chris Thomas heads Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.