Are you a person who clicks the “checkout” button to purchase something, but then leaves before you get it finished?
There are many little things that can prevent you from completing a successful checkout. It can be too difficult to complete the checkout process.
Your customers should experience the same process. To get to the finish line, they need a seamless experience with their checkout.
Let’s talk about how important seamless checkout experiences are and five tips to make yours smooth as butter.
A seamless checkout experience is essential
A poor checkout process can ruin the customer’s experience, no matter how many times they want one of your products. Customers don’t have any reason to stay on one site when there are so many ecommerce shops.
A poor checkout experience can discourage customers from purchasing. However, the reverse is true: a great checkout experience will increase conversions. If they improve their checkout flow , an average ecommerce shop can increase conversions by 35.26%.
Five Ways to Make Your Checkout Process More Effective
What can you do to increase your conversions with a seamless checkout? These are five suggestions.
1. Checkout is a zone that’s free from commitment
Although it may be a good idea to require customers to create an account, it could also cause some shoppers to abandon you. These people don’t want to add another email or password to their long list of accounts.
Always include a guest checkout option if your shop has customer accounts. It should be as important as your sign-in options, such as the one below by Warby Parker.
Bonus tip Allow customers to sign up using their existing Facebook or Google accounts. You’ll have to only click a few times and they will not need to remember a password.
2. Make fees transparent
Customers often abandon their shopping carts because of hidden charges that appear after they check out. An astonishing 49% of customers who abandon their shopping carts do so because additional costs such as shipping and taxes are too high. They were not warned by the shop and ended up in sticker shock.
The best way to keep customers in your checkout is before they click the cart button. Inform your customers about additional fees that you have on your cart and product pages. This will let them know what to expect.
We understand that shipping and taxes are dependent on where the customer is located. What can you do to avoid them? Just remind your customers that they will have to pay additional fees like Singular Society.
Singular Society customers who order pasta will not know their shipping costs immediately. They have a handy link to shipping costs and a heads up that customers will be able to see the total at checkout. The best part is that the price includes VAT.
3. It’s easy!
You put more obstacles between the customer and their purchase if you make it more difficult to complete your checkout. Make the checkout process as simple as possible so that shoppers can move towards a sale.
These features will make it easier for people to complete checkouts.
- Address auto-fill When a customer enters an address, the checkout displays validated addresses that may match.
- Card validation The checkout interface validates the credit card in real time, so that the customer is sure they have entered the correct information.
- Descriptive errors messages: Error codes let the customer know if the error is something they can correct (like a incorrect card number) or something that they cannot (like a server problem).
Pro tip: Unbounce’s Stripe app offers frictionless features such as these to help customers seal the deal. It also comes with an easy-to-use checkout right out of the box.
4. Make sure your design is mobile-friendly
Mobile shopping is big–it accounts for 45% of all ecommerce sales. nearly half your customers will purchase from you via mobile.
Your mobile customers will have to swipe and pinch across the page to complete their checkout if your checkout is only compatible with desktop. The responsive checkout is just as important. Visitors might not find all the zooming in or out worthwhile.
Let’s take a look at Stripe’s mobile sample checkout to see how it looks in action.
The elements are large enough to be easy to scroll through and tap. Every element has enough space to allow the user to tap on what they want, but not too much. It’s all in one column, so visitors don’t have to scroll down to get more information.
5. It should be accessible worldwide
Ecommerce’s global reach is one of its greatest assets. You can open an online store in the U.S. and get business from someone in Japan.
If your checkout does not offer Japanese as an option or yen, the customer may have to abandon you. While online translators are fine for product descriptions and currency conversions, you should be 100% certain that you understand what you are reading on checkout pages.
Make your checkout accessible to as many people as possible and offer multiple currencies and languages. Stripe is one example of a checkout interface that includes popular international payment methods.
These are sample checkouts from a U.S. and Chinese customer.
The American version is focused on card payments. However, the Chinese version offers Alipay, which is one of the most well-known payment methods in China. The Alipay logo can be seen in the box right next to the box with credit card symbol. Customers from China can choose their preferred language, currency and platform all in one checkout.
Do not let a bad checkout process stop you from selling
Don’t let your checkout hold back sales. How can I help my customers get from cart to check out?
Unbounce’s Stripe App has an easy-to-use interface to make checkout seamless for customers of landing pages. Unbounce’s Conversion Intelligence Platform takes visitors to conversion and guides them through checkout. You won’t find a better team.
Unbounce Apps can help you convert your customers.
Leave a Reply