The other day I was browsing an e-commerce clothing store and the Quantity box suddenly seemed odd to me: ”Who would buy MORE THAN ONE of this shoe – in the EXACT SAME STYLE AND SIZE??”
I wondered how many people EVER buy more than 1 IDENTICAL piece of clothing? (We’re talking same SIZE, STYLE, COLOR, etc…). I asked my good friends over at Gongshow Gear (makers of awesome hockey inspired clothing) if I could have a peak at their Analytics data, and here are the results:
- On average, only 1 out of 50 people will buy more than 1 of the same item
- For non-clothing items that come in a single size & color multiple qty purchases increase (to between 12% and 40% — but still a minority of your customers)
Do we need the Quantity field?
Note: The Quantity field is useful for items where you EXPECT the customer to purchase more than 1 – make sure you dig into your analytics before making your final decision.
Does it really matter?
Probably not. The quantity field usually defaults to 1 item so you never have to touch it anyway. I have a hard time believing that the quantity field will make a measurable difference to conversion rates for most sites. If there is a difference, it is probably very very small. Then again I assume that Zappos measures everything they do on their site and THEY removed the Quantity box.
If anyone decides to run an A/B test to get stats on this, I would love to hear your results.
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Good food for usability. Streamline all the things! Not unrelated article on user forms:
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2012/06/27/form-field-validation-errors-only-approach/
Very good POV – came across your post as I’m searching for statistics related to sites where the removal of the quantity box is not an option, and where the default quantity is by default set to zero. WHY would zero be the default when you could increase the conversion rate (potentially not only by removing the quantity field in the first place) by defaulting to 1? If users want it, they will “add to cart”, if not, they will abandon page. Are you aware of any statistics (conversion rates, task completion time, etc.) that compare quantity default of 0 vs 1?
No, I don’t have any statistics. But it adds one extra click / step, so I assume there is some sort of negative effect on success rates.