The most beautiful ecommerce website in the world is worthless if it doesn’t function properly, yet many online retailers still do not optimize the most important element of their website: the checkout.
To help you create a smooth end-to-end customer journey, which provides seamless user experiences and encourages sales conversions, we’ve put together some top tips for enhancing your ecommerce checkout:
- Make the journey to purchase as smooth as possible
Often it’s not actually the checkout that proves the biggest issue for ecommerce customers – it’s their journey to the point of making a purchase. There should be a logical progression from viewing an item and adding it to a basket to checking out.
Once there, customers need to be guided clearly through the checkout process – adding features such as a progress bar can help underline how simple it is to make a transaction. Adding a warning feature if users press the ‘back’ button is also useful to avoid customers losing data mid-checkout.
- Enclose the checkout
Too many distractions can navigate shoppers in a different direction at the most critical point in the purchase journey. Make sure all non-essential links are removed, and those links that you need to leave in pop up in a new window, so that consumers don’t accidentally stray away from the checkout page.
- Design a user-friendly checkout form
One of consumers’ biggest frustrations is wanting to buy an item, but finding the checkout process too confusing – or time consuming – to navigate. Only ask shoppers for the necessary information to complete the transaction, and nothing more.
Other useful techniques are avoiding single item drop-down menus, identifying compulsory fields with an asterisk, and including check boxes to confirm consent alongside customer data, all of which make checkout forms easier to use.
If details are entered incorrectly, it’s helpful to include a note explaining what the problem might be when they submit the form. This speeds up the amendment process.
- Include a guest checkout option
In an ideal world all retailers would capture customer details every time they purchase something, to build up a better understanding of their brand value.
However, some shoppers just don’t have the time – so offer a guest checkout option to ensure that lack of time doesn’t cost you a sale.
- Feature delivery and gift options up-front
Another consumer pet peeve is checking out an item and finding that, on the last page before the transaction is completed, the retailer has added a costly delivery charge to the total.
It can be tempting to conceal delivery charges in order to make purchases look affordable, but this tends to increase cart abandonment rates rather than reduce them. Shoppers want as much transparency as possible throughout the buying process.
If you’re adding delivery charges at the beginning of checkout, you could also include gift options such as a different fulfillment address, wrapping service or ‘add an extra present’ suggestions. This can help to boost average transaction values and nurture greater customer loyalty.