Sincere thanks to all of you who took the time to send congratulations and feedback on our
first “know-letter”. We’re glad you found it helpful – it seems we held to our “specific,
actionable info and advice” mantra. In case you missed it, check it out here.

Some of you wrote to tell us about your Checkout “war stories” and successes. We love that!

There’s no better way to learn than to see what does and doesn’t work in the field. Here are 3 we’re passing on to you.

1 Christina Callas, head of eCommerce for Lord & Taylor, shared more “Checkout lessons learned”
when she presented at Internet Retailer’s Web Design conference in February. She suggests
using defaults in drop-down menus, instead of “Choose One”, thereby saving a click. For
example, defaulting shipping options to “Standard 4-7 days” and defaulting the country to “United
States”.

2 Allow easy entry of multiple coupon codes or gift cards, assuming that is your business
strategy . Here, Victoria’s Secret allows 3 offer codes to be applied in one order. Best Buy makes
it easy to enter unlimited Gift Card numbers for redemption.

3 Parentgiving.com CEO, Keith Maddox, wrote us that they recently re-designed their checkout to
consolidate several steps into the first page of checkout. The delineations between sections on
this page are nicely clear-cut and the shading of the “log in” and “create an account” steps helps
distinguish them as optional, but encouraged.