Having a smooth checkout service is incredibly important when it comes to eCommerce. Why? Well, it reduces the number of cart abandonments. This drives up your profits, increases customer lifetime potential, and boosts customer satisfaction. In this post we have curated some tips for helping you to ensure the smoothest checkout experience available.
Multiple Payment Methods
One of the first things you need to ensure is that there are multiple payment options available. Each customer has unique personalized needs. There are many ways they may want to make their purchase, and you should be able to cater for all of them.
Some possible payment methods include:
- Bank transfer
- Card
- Cash in store
- Klarna
- Paypal
- Apple pay
The more of these you include, the more likely it is that you don’t lose any customers because they can’t pay in a certain way. These days lots of eCommerce platforms have built in multiple payment options, and you can choose the ones you want.
Guest Payment Options
If your shoppers have to make an account to make their payment, this might put them off. They may have just been interested in a specific product, and not want to commit to being a repeat customer yet.
If you give them the option of making a purchase without registering as a customer, this could be very useful. This means that maybe they will return back, and you will still have their email in your data system. The less pressure the shopper feels you are putting on them, and the more they feel you are catering to their needs, the more chance they have of returning.
Part of the reason shoppers don’t want to be registered is because they are worried of annoying email and SMS marketing. By using advanced email and SMS marketing systems such as Attentive and Klaviyo, you can help to ensure that the impression of these marketing systems improves.
Reduce Information Intake
The less steps people have to take, the smoother the process will be. People don’t want to spend a lot of time filling out form after form to make a purchase. Actually, many systems with their one-click payment option actually have great benefits.
If you can’t afford to do a one-click payment, at the least: keep it simple. Make sure you are asking for the least amount of excess information possible. Why? If there are too many details to fill in, at some point the customer will bounce.
Only ask for fields that contain crucial information. You can add the option for additional information if the customer wants it, but only if they do.
Keep It Simple
When it comes to checkout, it’s all about the destination. The purpose of the checkout process is to flow through the funnel. At the end it’s whether or not the customer makes the purchase that is important. So don’t add any distractions!
People have short attention spans, and anything that might lead them away from making the purchase, could. Reduce the chances of cart abandonment by removing any other images, links or options for click-aways.
Of course, adding cross-sell and upsell options before checkout is a great idea. But once you’ve got to the final few stages, make it as simple as possible. The checkout button should be bold, clear and easy to find.
Moving Forwards
The golden rule of UX: the user should always be clear about two things:
- What just happened
- What they can do next
“Continue to checkout” is crucial. Make sure they know what they are doing, what they are buying, how they can make edits to this, and how they can proceed. After this make sure to send them a follow up email, and keep them updated with everything happening in their process.
Conclusion
Checkout may seem like a simple part of the eCommerce process, but it’s not. Its importance cannot be understated. If your checkout process isn’t up to scratch, you could fall at the last hurdle and use lots of sales. With all the work that your business has put in to get to this stage, it’s simply not viable to lose people at this last pivotal point.