Additionally, as always, criticism and opportunities for growth are more than welcome. So, check it out and let me know what you think!

Checkout Review #1 – Photojojo! from Nicholas Ward on Vimeo.

“By redesigning the overall flow of the shopping cart we’ve made the shopping experience on our site easier and more intuitive,” stated Jason Wolfe, CEO of GiftCards.com. [Source]

Looking at the individual steps, it looks like they’ve done a lot right. There are some strange features too, check out the video at the end to see what I mean…

GiftCards.com Shopping Cart

Checkout Step 1. Overall impressions of this page are that it is simple and clearly outlines the objective. Note that top navigation, search, and account links are maintained. I had to move my mouse from the top left to the bottom right of the screen to get to the next step, and this caused the navigation flyout to activate. Notable attributes:

GiftCards may benefit from adding a progress bar to guide users through the process a little bit better, but given the simplicity of their layout, it may not drive much.

GiftCards.com Checkout Step 2

Checkout Step 2. The second step of checkout is another clean page. The standard template is still maintained.

The only remarkable thing about this page is the lack of the “Next Step” button until a user enters all of the required information on the page. I’d be very interested to see testing data and user interviews here.

My only concern would be that this is an unnecessary point of failure. It’s possible that something random (user settings, misrendered page, conflicting code… etc) would keep the JavaScript from displaying this button, but I’m cynical that way.

Checkout Step 3. The final page much the same. Key features are there – it’s easy to pass information to the billing fields, and instructions are ample. Required fields are clear. The checkout contains a McAfee security badge and supports conversion with the text “Safe and Secure Checkout.” When you click the help icon next to the CVN field, the page white’s out with guiding information and repositions the screen to the top of the page. You can see an example of this by clicking here.

Overall there are some good usability examples and some opportunities for improvement. What would you change?