Your eCommerce checkout process will determine how many visitors on your site actually finish the buying process. You have made this amazing site, done all the legwork, advertising, and attracted the right people to your site, but if those people don’t make it to the end, nothing really matters because your business aim is to make money.
Research states that there is a 69.5% cart abandonment rate. It also says that one out of five shoppers who visit your eCommerce site abandon their cart due to a longer and complicated checkout process. In this article today, we show you how to make the checkout process on your site easier.
Don’t force people to register their details at checkout
Most people don’t like to leave their details on sites because of the promotional emails they will probably be getting from that site. If you can give shoppers the option of finishing the checkout without registering an account or leaving their details, you may reduce cart abandonment and make more sales.
Offer an optional guest checkout procedure so that your visitors have a seamless checkout experience. Alternatively, you can ask for their email after they complete checkout.
Offer free shipping
High shipping cost is at the top of the list of reasons why people leave your website at checkout without completing the purchase. Most eCommerce sites hide shipping costs and add them at the very end. By doing this, they assume they will close more sales which is the opposite.
Your customers want to see shipping costs together with the price of the item they are buying or no shipping at all. You can say all shipping is free if customers buy goods above a certain amount, and for the shipping costs, ensure you include them with the pricing of items on the site so the customers can see what they will be paying as they are browsing.
Free shipping is one of the reasons Amazon Prime is raking in millions. Customers prefer to pay the $99 a year membership cost than pay for shipping.
Have clear CTAs
Don’t leave your visitors confused when on your site, especially at checkout. Have clear CTAs such as ‘Go to checkout,’ ‘Go back to store,’ don’t just have CTAs like ‘Go’ and ‘Apply’; those may be confusing.
The confusion will make your visitors frustrated and likely to abandon the purchase process. Ensure you are specific with your CTAs when working on your shopping cart integration.
Remove distractions from your checkout page.
The checkout page is where you want all your site shoppers to land, so you wouldn’t want to have any distractions there. Do not offer any discounts or popups when customers get to your checkout page.
You can keep shoppers focused on the page by removing the navigation bar once they land on your checkout page. Alternatively, you can do it how Amazon does it. When you land on the Amazon checkout page, the menu bar disappears, leaving relevant links like terms of service and privacy policy links. Discuss this with your site developer and find something that works for your site.
Follow the tips given above to improve the usability of your checkout page, and you will make more sales. If customers have a good experience with your eCommerce site, they will keep coming back.
