Holiday prep 2004: TJX streamlines Web checkout

This is the third in a series of stories about retailers bolstering their Web sites in time for 2004 holiday sales. Read about how Wine.com revamped its Web search capabilities and how Musicland is piloting real-time messaging services. Stay tuned for more retailers' stories.

Abandoned shopping carts are an unfortunate fact of life for online retailers.

More than half (57%) of shoppers who initially add something to their online shopping carts later abandon those carts without making a purchase, according to DoubleClick. The online advertising and marketing firm found in its most recent E-Commerce Site Trend Report that for every dollar customers spend on e-commerce sites, $4.10 is left in abandoned shopping carts.

This season TJX Companies is making a play to stop that trend before it has a chance to take root on its new e-commerce sites.

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This is the third in a series of stories about retailers bolstering their Web sites in time for 2004 holiday sales. Read about how Wine.com revamped its Web search capabilities and how Musicland is piloting real-time messaging services. Stay tuned for more retailers' stories.

Abandoned shopping carts are an unfortunate fact of life for online retailers.

More than half (57%) of shoppers who initially add something to their online shopping carts later abandon those carts without making a purchase, according to DoubleClick. The online advertising and marketing firm found in its most recent E-Commerce Site Trend Report that for every dollar customers spend on e-commerce sites, $4.10 is left in abandoned shopping carts.

This season TJX Companies is making a play to stop that trend before it has a chance to take root on its new e-commerce sites.

TXJ is parent to eight businesses: T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, A.J. Wright, and Bob's Stores in the U.S.; Winners and HomeSense in Canada; and T.K. Maxx in Europe. It has had Web sites for some of its brands in the past, but no e-commerce sites.

In September TJX made its first foray into online sales, launching e-commerce sites for T.J. Maxx and HomeGoods. One of the technologies TJX deployed is a single-screen checkout application from Molecular.

The intent is to avoid complicated and lengthy checkout processes that can turn off customers. "Although we have not prior to this operated e-commerce sites, we certainly have experience with operating thousands of stores on the ground," says Sherry Lang, vice president of investor and public relations at TJX. "One of the things we believe customers like about our shopping experience is easy checkout. For us, using an easier, more efficient, more convenient checkout system out on the Web was a natural progression."

Designed to helps retailers streamline e-commerce transaction processes, Molecular's Single-Screen Checkout technology puts the entire process - from adding and adjusting items in the shopping cart to entering credit-card information - on a single page.

That page is displayed as a separate window that opens when an item is added to the cart. Because it's a separate window, users don't need to click back and forth between Web pages or reenter data when an order is changed, says Darryl Gehly, a vice president at Molecular.

"The shopping cart opens in a Flash window, so you don’t lose the context of where you were shopping. You stay in the familiar place you navigated to," Gehly says.

In addition, as items are added to or deleted from the cart, Molecular's software calculates tax and shipping costs. "This way there are no surprises at the end," Gehly says. Unexpectedly high shipping costs - which retailers often do not reveal until near the end of the checkout process - is one reason for shopping cart abandonment, analysts say.