Every merchant has at least once faced the problem of shopping cart abandonment. According to the statistics, more than 50% of people that put products into the shopping cart don’t buy them eventually. This is a powerful argument for looking carefully at your checkout page and analyzing the ways to improve it. Let’s consider this topic and create a checkout optimization guide in our today’s article.
What is important to know about checkout page
A homepage is like a front door and it should be beautiful and welcoming. It invites customers to come into your online store and spend some time there enjoying shopping. The checkout page is the flip side of the front door and it plays a major part in making a purchase decision. That’s why it is extremely important to think about how your checkout page should look like before creating a webstore.
The checkout page is an online analog of a physical checkout counter in any store where customers can pay for their goods. One-page checkout is now gaining popularity. It is considered to be faster and more user-friendly and allows customers to see all blocks that should be filled on one page. Moreover, this page has no navigation, which makes it easier for clients to edit the entered information. But even such easy-to-use pages still have high bounce rate.
Why customers abandon the purchase
Every webstore visitor has his own criteria for online stores and different reasons for abandonment of the purchasing process. We compiled the most popular of them.
- Extra costs. It is probably #1 reason. No one wants to receive a shipping fee or some extra taxes as a surprise.
- Account creation. A user spends time looking for a product, comparing it with others, thinking about “yes? or no?” and finally he chooses it, puts it to the cart but can’t complete the purchase without creating an account. Seriously? Why would you create an extra obstacle between your product and its buyer?
- Too complicated checkout process. Nobody wants to spend half an hour filling dozens of fields in a checkout form and guessing captchas. “Less is better” is a rule in this case.
- Too slow delivery. “Right here, right now” is a motto of our century. Do not make your customers wait, two weeks of waiting can be too late. Well, honestly it is almost always too late.
- Payment methods. Could you imagine the disappointment of a customer, when he proceeds all steps of the checkout only to find no suitable payment method? Don’t even hope that in this case, the buyer will visit your webstore ever again.
How to optimize the checkout page
If your checkout page has at least one point from the above-mentioned, it is a reason for you to think about its optimization. We analyzed best checkout experience to find out most effective ways to optimize the checkout page.
- Free shipping. This option is supposed to be crucial in making a decision about a purchase. If you can afford free shipping, do it. If not, there is still something you can suggest to your customers.
- Free shipping starting from a certain amount of money spent. It is extremely simple but don’t forget to inform your customers about this. It is better to do it not only on the checkout page but also in other sections of the online store. You may add a separate block with related products to your checkout page offering your customers to purchase some extra items to get a free delivery.
- Account creation after the checkout process. To create an account usually means filling in different information, generating a password, and the worst part — keeping it in mind. Customers will be more inclined to do it after they complete a purchase, so that they could track it by themselves.
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Visit the page- Log in via social networks. Such option will greatly simplify the checkout procedure. If your webstore doesn’t have it by default, you can always improve its functionality by adding a necessary extension.
- Guest checkout. Give your customers an opportunity to buy products without creating an account. If you still want your customers to register and submit their email for further communication, you can suggest a special gift, a promo code or a discount as a token of gratitude for completing this step.
- Multiple payment methods. Let your customers choose from a variety of payment methods. If you have an offline store, don’t forget to include it into the payment methods list.
- Simplicity. Make your checkout page as simple as possible: no extra buttons, text blocks, and fields to complete, only the necessary information.
- Customer service and return policy. It is always easier to spend money online when you know that you will be provided with great service and that you can return a product if something goes wrong. That’s why the links to clear and fair return policy will be an advantage.
- “Continue shopping” button. Allow your customers to continue shopping by clicking a special button instead of hitting a back and find that it deleted all cart details.
Our last advice for every webstore owner: when thinking about a checkout page and its optimization always try to look at it with your customer’s eyes and everything will fall into place.
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