6 Ways to Bring Results with an Improved Checkout Experience
By: Natalie Wires
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The advent of online shopping has created a world where anyone with access to the internet can purchase nearly anything they’re looking for online in seconds.
While this change has been positive for many businesses, the ecommerce industry faces unique challenges that brick-and-mortar predecessors did not. With more than three in every four shoppers leaving their digital carts before buying, cart abandonment costs the global ecommerce industry $18 billion annually in sales revenue.
You’re probably wondering: what can be done to avoid cart abandonment? While cart abandonment isn’t fully preventable, there are ways to optimize for the best possible ecommerce checkout experience for your customers and ultimately increase conversions.
Let’s take a look at six ways to bring results with ecommerce checkout processes that drive ecommerce shoppers to purchase.
1. Condense the checkout process
The key to building the best checkout pages possible may be simpler than you think. When it comes to ecommerce checkout pages, the shorter the better. In fact, 21% of respondents to a cart abandonment study named a long and complicated checkout process as their top reason for abandoning their carts.
Make it easy for customers to navigate the checkout process by eliminating the number of ecommerce checkout steps that stand between them and your product.
Urban Outfitters keeps their checkout page short, sweet, and to the point. By asking for only the most pertinent information and keeping the user interface clean, Urban Outfitters eliminates some of the tediousness that compels users to say goodbye to their carts.
2. Remove required registration
With 28% of shoppers listing required registration as their reason for abandoning their ecommerce shopping carts, it’s safe to say that it’s time for sites to abandon the need for shoppers to create new accounts. Improve the ecommerce checkout flow for your buyers by removing the obstacles in their way.
Walmart encourages users to keep shopping whether they have an account with them or not by offering a guest checkout option.
3. Include a progress bar
A simple way to show users how far along they are in the ecommerce checkout process is by providing a progress bar. This gives users a visual representation of how far along they are and how much they have left in the process, enabling them to see the end goal – completing the purchase.
By adding the steps needed to complete checkout to their ecommerce checkout page, Etsy makes the checkout process more transparent and simpler to follow along.
4. Provide online payment processing options
Ecommerce websites need to provide several ecommerce payment options for shoppers when it comes time to check out. Having multiple online payment methods increases the likelihood that customers will complete the sale by ensuring that they’ll be able to use their preferred method.
The Asos checkout screen includes several payment methods, including pay with installment options, making shopping more accessible for even the most budget-conscious customer.
Ecommerce payment processing gets more complex when you’re expanding your online business globally, so making sure you have a partner to handle your merchant services for global payments and online payment processing is crucial. This will help you deliver a seamless checkout experience using the payment methods your customers expect and prefer.
5. Optimize for mobile experiences
Today, mobile traffic accounts for around half of all ecommerce traffic. At the same time, the cart abandonment rate for mobile is 86% – higher than the average abandonment rates for both desktop and tablet shoppers.
Ensure the ecommerce checkout page design is optimized for mobile purchases to create the best ecommerce checkout experience, no matter what device the user is buying from. If the experience isn’t seamless, you risk losing sales from shoppers visiting your site from a mobile device.
Wayfair makes online shopping an enjoyable experience no matter which device shoppers are buying from by optimizing their checkout pages for mobile.
6. Adopt a seller’s mindset
Finally, adopting a seller’s mindset can help you to gain some quick, easy wins at the end of a purchase. The ecommerce checkout process should capitalize on the opportunity for cross-selling and upselling additional products from the site to users who make it to the final stage of the buying journey.
By including similar products at checkout, Forever 21 encourages additional sales of clothing and accessories the user may not have been looking for in the first place – a win-win!
Fight cart abandonment with optimized ecommerce checkout pages
Making simple changes to your ecommerce checkout pages will help eliminate some of the barriers that encourage cart abandonment. By creating the most seamless customer experience possible, no matter which market you’re selling in or which device your customers are using, you’ll ultimately increase conversions.
Interested in exploring more ways to increase online sales and improve customer experience for your direct-to-consumer channel? Download our new ebook for helpful insights and actionable advice.
