Fatal flaws in your checkout process can’t only cost you the potential sale at hand but also drastically decrease the likelihood of that customer ever returning to your site to shop for from you within the future.
Table of Contents
1. Eliminate all chance of unpleasant surprises
Make sure customers have all the knowledge they have upfront to form a confident buying decision. This includes confirming the supply of the item; calculating promotional pricing or discounts; mapping out shipping options, costs and timetables; specifying whether or not a nuisance tax applies to the acquisition and clearly defining your return policy.
If a customer reaches checkout only to get that the actual item they wanted is out of stock, ineligible for an advertised discount or costs more to ship than they’re willing to pay, odds are good which will be the last you see of them.
2. Display relevant details within the cart
The handcart itself should provide a transparent overview of the pending purchase at a look so that customers don’t need to navigate far away from the checkout process to verify the small print of their order.
Keep in mind that by now within the process, your shopper could have clicked to and from the cart numerous times as they chose multiple items, browsed various categories of products or compared one item to a different and that they could also be fuzzy on the specifics of everything they’ve chosen.
Without the advantage of having the ability to glance down into a physical handcart to review their selections, they have a reassurance that the package that lands on their doorstep will contain exactly what they intend, so make certain to supply thumbnail images, descriptions, quantities, sizes, colors, prices, availability and applicable discounts for every product within the cart.
3. Allow changes within the cart
Every time your customer navigates far away from the cart, you’re running the danger of losing them, so confirm that they will edit details like quantity, size, and color without having to locate the merchandise page a second time.
4. Offer multiple payment options
If you’re conducting e-commerce business online, your site should be tied into a secure payment gateway. However, offering the choice to finish the transaction through a third-party processor like PayPal or Google Checkout can put some customers – especially those that might not shop online often – comfortable because they do not need to release their MasterCard number and billing information on to you.
Conversely, PayPal, and Google Checkout should not be the sole options you provide. If a customer doesn’t have already got an account established with one among these payment processors, they’ll not want to make one just to try to business with you.
5. Don’t require customers to make an account
Without a doubt, it’s tempting to need customers to make an account to finish their purchase because it’ll allow you to gather valuable data from them for future sales analysis and marketing.
However, given the sheer number of social media and e-commerce sites that your customers likely interact with, they’ll alright have account creation fatigue. they’ll not want to determine yet one more user account and password just to form a sale, especially if they do not necessarily anticipate ordering from you again within the near future.
The best approach is to supply two options: finding out as a guest, which can expedite the method, or creating an account, which offers conveniences appealing to those that do shop with you regularly, like eliminating the necessity to re-enter their shipping and billing information whenever they create a sale and allowing them to see on the status of an order.
The key’s to let your customer make the selection that suits them best; don’t force the difficulty and lose a sure sale in pursuit of future marketing opportunities.
6. Simplify and streamline
Online shoppers are notoriously impatient, so don’t invite more information than you would like to finish the transaction, and do not break the checkout process into more steps than necessary.
Make sure also to display a breadcrumb trail that indicates how the checkout process will progress. If a customer can see at the first step that they only have three steps left to finish their order, they will not get impatient or frustrated as they move from one screen to subsequent, not knowing what’s coming next or when the method is going to be done.
7. Cater to the on-the-go shopper
When evaluating your checkout process, do not forget about mobile users. A customer could also be standing within the bricks-and-mortar store of your competitor and comparison shopping on their phone. If you offer the higher price, don’t you would like to form it as easy as possible for this customer – who’s able to buy – to order from you on the spot instead?
This is one more reason why it is important to streamline the steps within your checkout process the maximum amount as possible also to make sure that form fields are often easily completed on touch-based devices. Walkthrough your checkout process on as many various sorts of mobile devices and platforms as you’ll get your hands on, and do not waste any time in eliminating any obstacles or roadblocks that you simply discover.
8. Don’t hand over timely
In the age of multitasking, sometimes a customer will simply get distracted before they need an opportunity to finish their transaction. The phone rings, the baby wakes up from her nap, the pc freezes, the pizza delivery guy arrives, etc.
Or sometimes, they only need some overtime to form a choice while they still do research, get opinions from friends, and therefore the like. While you cannot do anything to mitigate this sort of offline interference, you continue to have an opportunity to save lots of the sale.
A persistent handcart retains the things your customer has selected for a group period of your time, whether that’s a couple of hours or a couple of days. When your customer features a chance to return to their computer, they will devour exactly where they left off instead of facing the effort of tracking down each item again, albeit that they had closed their browser window.
9. Never underestimate the importance of the human element
If your customer features a question as they’re progressing through checkout, the simplest, most reliable thanks to ensuring they do not lose momentum are to display your customer service telephone number prominently at every step along the way.
A simple question should have an easy resolution, and typically that’s best provided in real-time by a person’s being. If you allow your customers to their own devices to seek out the answers they have, you’re running the danger of allowing them to become distracted or frustrated and losing all interest in completing the order.
10. Reinforce trust at every turn
As with all elements of doing business online, trust is vital. Within the absence of face-to-face human contact, you would like to believe your website to create a trust for you if you want customers to settle on to spend their hard-earned dollars with you instead of together with your competitor.