Multi-Cart Management in E-Commerce Search Interfaces
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Solution Overview
Problem
E-commerce websites typically limit customers to a single shopping cart, restricting the ability to manage multiple carts simultaneously and requiring access to product detail pages for adding products, which hampers efficient purchasing processes.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a system that allows customers to create and manage multiple live shopping carts, enabling the addition of products during the search process using supply-chain information for refinement and filtering, and providing a simplified interface for selecting suitable products across multiple carts.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If a single shopping cart is provided on the e-commerce website, then the system complexity is reduced and management is simplified, but the customer's ability to manage multiple purchases simultaneously is limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the single shopping cart into multiple independent shopping carts that can be managed simultaneously. Each cart is a separate entity with its own product list, allowing customers to create and manage multiple carts for different purchase scenarios without increasing overall system complexity through modular design.
Solution Approach 2:
The shopping cart system is designed to perform multiple functions: it can serve as a traditional single cart, multiple simultaneous carts, or a combination thereof. The system universally supports both single-cart and multi-cart modes, allowing customers to choose based on their needs without requiring separate systems.
2Productivity
If product addition is only allowed from product detail pages, then the purchasing process follows a conventional linear flow, but the efficiency of adding products during search is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent enables customers to add products to shopping carts during the search phase, before navigating to product detail pages. This preliminary action allows customers to quickly populate carts with multiple items of interest during browsing, significantly improving purchasing efficiency by eliminating the need to visit each product page individually.
3Adaptability or versatility
If multiple shopping carts are allowed simultaneously, then the customer's purchasing flexibility is improved, but the interface complexity for managing carts increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the management of multiple shopping carts into a unified interface that displays and controls all carts simultaneously. Rather than requiring separate interfaces for each cart, the system combines cart management functions into a single view where customers can switch between, add items to, and manage multiple carts without navigating through complex separate interfaces.
4Loss of time
If customers must navigate to individual product detail pages to add products, then product information display is comprehensive, but the time required for product selection increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent allows customers to perform preliminary product selection and addition to carts during the search phase, before detailed product examination. This enables customers to quickly identify and collect multiple items of interest, reducing the time spent on product selection while maintaining the option to review detailed information later before finalizing purchases.
Data Source
AI summary
Purchase history data is used to automatically create links within a data repository between product sold via an electronic vendor system and a plurality of shopping carts. When a customer performs a search for product, the vendor system queries the data repository to retrieve the plurality of shopping carts that have been linked to the product that is associated within the data repository to the search request. A plurality of customer interface elements, each corresponding to a one of the plurality of shopping carts, is then presented as a result to the search query. A selection of a one of the customer interface elements causes the vendor system to add one or more of the product to the corresponding one of the plurality of shopping carts.