Samtec has been selling its products online since the early 2000s, the very early days of eCommerce. We’ve been through a couple of shopping cart iterations since then.
Before this recent upgrade, Samtec.com had been running on a cart system that was built in 2011. It worked for quite a while, but time moves fast online, so it was due for some upgrades.
In July, we released a brand new version of our online shopping cart with several major upgrades.
Upgraded Cart Design and Features
The first thing users will notice is an upgraded design. Modern screens and browsers bring far more space than what was needed in 2011. We’ve increased the font size, added spacing, added an Order Summary and overall gave the Cart a much cleaner and more pleasant user experience that flows much better with the rest of the website.
We’ve also built many of the interactions to be in-line and much faster, such as the Delete and Save for Later functions. This makes the Cart much more friendly to use.
You’ll also notice a new “mini cart” panel at the top of the website. If you hover over the cart icon in the navigation, you’ll see a summary of what is in your cart, with the options to View Cart or immediately Proceed to Checkout.
Full Mobile Compatibility
Another aspect of the Internet that has changed significantly since 2011 is the rise of smartphones. When we built the Cart in 2011, most people were still using their very first smartphone, and to see a mobile website was still very rare.
This version of the cart brings complete mobile compatibility, allowing users to interact with every single element on a smartphone that they would be able to use on desktop devices.
This allows users to start from the homepage on a mobile device, and get all the way down to the Cart in a complete mobile experience.
(Note: We’ll be upgrading the checkout for mobile devices in the near future)
Integrated Add to Cart Buttons
Before this new version, adding an item to your cart was a bit of a disconnected experience. It required users to click a link, which then redirected them to a new page, which then allowed them to add an item to their cart. It worked but wasn’t ideal.
This version features a completely integrated Add to Cart button. Essentially anywhere you run across a part number on Samtec.com, you’ll be able to add that to your cart with a single click.
There is also a standalone Add to Cart tool at the top of the website, allowing users to add a part number to the cart from anywhere on the website quickly and easily.
Azure Cloud Architecture
Aside from the design components that make using the new cart much more friendly, we’ve built the backend using Microsoft Azure cloud technology, creating a much more robust infrastructure and overall much faster experience than what was possible before.
Faster Pricing Engine
An update that came along with the new cart upgrade is a new pricing engine. This allows us to retrieve prices for the items throughout the website and in the cart much faster than before, further adding to the speed component of the new cart.
Coming Soon
The features above mark our Phase 1 release of the new cart experience. We’ll be adding several new Phase 2 and Phase 3 features moving forward, such as UX cleanup, reducing or removing cart line item limitations, adding loading animations where needed, and cleaning up a few known issues.
We may also explore additional features such as adding Linkedin sign-in functionality, adding multiple named wishlists, and product recommendations based on purchase history. Stay tuned for updates on those.
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We’re always looking for ways to improve your online experience.
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If you have any feedback or suggestions for our web team, feel free to send an email to eHelpDesk@samtec.com.
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