If you think AJAX is a brand of abrasive household cleaner, you're right. It's also a powerful web development technology that can significantly improve user interfaces. With shopping cart abandonment rates near 50% on average, wouldn't it be nice to have a simple, one-page checkout flow to give your web customers fewer opportunities to abandon the process?
I stumbled upon a company that has created a real live one-page checkout flow using AJAX. The company is Varien, and they have produced two videos to show you how the flow works [see the video: user with existing account] [see the video: user without an existing account]. Aside from being an insightful look into how an AJAX checkout process would work, this video details the user experience of the flow. While a one-page checkout flow has improved conversion rates by 50% for TJMaxx.com and HomeGoods.com, Varien doesn't specify actual results of this AJAX checkout flow (which you can see live at BentGear.com).
At the very least, this is a look into what the checkout process of the future may look like. If you can afford to develop a process like this and run A/B tests against your current checkout flow, it could be worth the expense and learnings.
