Just imagine you are in a rush and getting late for your office. You are on transport and want to order something to eat from a restaurant. However, when you are about to checkout using your favorite payment method and find out that it is not supported!
Being starved and irritated for getting late at the same time, this extra burden is enough to ruin your morning. I bet you won’t use that food ordering and delivery system ever again.
Exactly this way, many customers face a bad checkout experience. For an eCommerce business, it is crucial to provide the absolute best checkout experience so that no checkout gets abandoned.
In this blog, I’ll guide you through how you can make sure of a user-friendly checkout for every customer. So, without any further due, let’s get started!
Why is a User-Friendly Checkout Experience Important?
A user-friendly checkout experience is important as it creates faster conversions, reduces abandonment, enhances customer satisfaction, trust and & security, and so on. Let’s find out more about it in detail.
Here are the reasons why you need a customer-friendly checkout system for your eCommerce system:
Faster Conversions
A smooth and user-friendly checkout process reduces friction, leading to quicker conversions and higher sales.
Reduced Abandonment
An intuitive and hassle-free checkout helps prevent customers from abandoning their checkout, boosting sales.
Customer Satisfaction
A happy customer means a successful business. And a user-friendly checkout experience is a crucial element of it. Because it ensures more customer retention, who’ll apparently recommend your business to others.
Trust and Security
A well-designed checkout enhances customer trust, ensuring their sensitive information is safe and secure.
These are the most important reasons for having a customer-friendly checkout experience in any eCommerce business.
Understand Checkout Abandonment
Before diving into the main point, let’s see how the buyer’s journey works! By doing so, you can understand how buyers feel during their buying journey.
- Attention & Interest: Social media makes a great impact on starting a buying journey. Most of the online purchases initiate either by searching or seeing ads on social platforms.
- Visit: The next step, a potential buyer visits an online shop or website to see the product listings and learn about that business.
- Shop: Here, the browsing starts. That person starts to roam around all the pages or search for a product he intends to buy if that falls into their comfortable price range.
- Add to Cart: When he finds an attractive price for his desired product, he instantly adds that item to the cart. Sometimes, he can add more than one item if he has multiple items in his mind.
- Checkout: Then the important phase starts. On the checkout page, he checks all the delivery methods, payment methods and all necessary information.
- Buy: Finally, the buyer chooses his desired delivery & payment method and confirms his purchase.
Pretty straightforward, right? However, the maximum buying journey breaks in steps 4 & 5. Mostly in the checkout phase. This scenario is called Checkout Abandonment.
So what is Checkout Abandonment?
Checkout abandonment refers to the situation in eCommerce when online buyers add items to their cart & the checkout page but leave the website without completing the purchase. It’s like walking away from a full shopping cart at the store before paying. This can happen for various reasons, such as unexpected costs, complicated checkout processes, or concerns about payment security.
So this is the most sale-losing point for an eCommerce business. How do we make sure that every customer must complete his buying journey? Read the following section to learn how to optimize the checkout process for an optimal buying journey.
Best Practices for User-Friendly Checkout Experience
To prevent checkout abandonment, there are some best methods that you can follow to make your customers complete their purchases. Let’s see what the best practices are–
- Simplify the Process
Limit the number of steps in the checkout process. Research shows that reducing the number of form fields can increase conversion rates by up to 26%.
- Guest Checkout Option
Offer a guest checkout option to customers. It can drastically decrease cart abandonment rates. Approximately 35% of customers abandon their carts when forced to create an account.
- Mobile Optimization
Ensure your checkout process is mobile-friendly. Mobile commerce is projected to account for 710 billion U.S. dollars in eCommerce sales by 2025.
- Trust Signals
Display trust badges and security seals prominently during checkout. Studies reveal that 61% of customers abandon their carts due to concerns about website security.
- Progress Indicators
You should implement a progress bar to show customers how far along they are in the checkout process. Progress indicators can reduce cart abandonment by 23%.
- Real-Time Validation
Use real-time validation to detect and help customers fix errors while filling out the correct information. For example, if someone adds text where only a number is required, the system will tell him that he needs to add a number. This can help reduce the possibility of form-filling errors by up to 22%.
- Transparent Shipping Costs
Clearly display shipping costs and any additional fees upfront. Unexpected costs are one of the top reasons for cart abandonment.
- Multiple Payment Options
Offer various payment methods to accommodate different customer preferences. Businesses that added alternative payment options experienced a 30% increase in conversion rates.
- One-Page Checkout
Consider a one-page checkout format to minimize clicks and simplify the process. One-page checkouts have been shown to decrease cart abandonment rates by up to 66%.
- Personalization
Use customer data to pre-fill form fields and enhance the checkout experience. Personalized checkouts can lead to a 6% to 10% increase in conversion rates.
If you are looking for a solution that checks all the points of the best practices for a user-friendly checkout system, It can help a business to reduce checkout abandonment effectively.
So these are the best practices you must follow to prevent checkout abandonment. Try them now and see the changes yourself.
Final Thoughts
To optimize the checkout experience for customers, simplify the process, add a guest checkout feature, optimize for mobile, add trust badges, transparent shipping cost, multiple payment options, one-page checkout and so on.
If you follow the steps above, you can make sure most of your customers will complete the checkout process. Hence, the checkout abandonment rate will reduce significantly.
Thanks for reading this blog. If you feel this blog helpful, feel free to share it with others.
Peace!
