More than 70% of online shopping baskets created were abandoned before payment in 2021 according to research by Statista.
That number increases to more than 80% for mobile shopping baskets.
This represents a huge hit to ecommerce businesses and potentially billions of pounds lost to the economy.
All from customers abandoning carts rather than going through the checkout process.
You might think cart abandonment is just a harsh reality of ecommerce businesses.
But there’s lots you can do to reduce the amount of customers you lose at the checkout.
In this guide, contactless card machine and merchant service provider Handepay shares 10 easy things you can do to increase checkout conversions for your ecommerce site.
- Offer multiple payment methods
Just like it doesn’t make sense to limit customers to using cash in a physical store, it only hurts your business to limit the number of ways a customer can pay online.
As a minimum you should be accepting all the major debit and credit cards.
But given that more shoppers than ever are turning to digital payments and digital wallets, you should be setting your online checkout to accept these payments as well.
- Reduce the number of steps to checkout
Customers are busy people.
Every step you add towards making a payment is just another opportunity for them to change their mind.
Often, it’s not even that the customer changed their mind.
It’s sometimes the case that they were distracted and forgot to come back to complete their purchase.
To combat this you need to reduce the number of steps in your checkout process to make it quicker and reduce the chances of a customer getting distracted or giving up before completing a purchase.
Consider having a single page checkout where customers can complete purchases quickly without jumping from one screen to another.
- Remove compulsory sign-ups
You’ve probably been through the process of trying to buy something on a website, then finding you can’t proceed unless you create an account.
It’s an annoying thing to happen and, for the most part, is just an excuse for the business to get your email address so you can be added to their email list.
Instead of making every visitor sign up to an account, you should also allow them to make a purchase as a guest.
If customers want to sign up to your website because they like what you sell, they’ll do it.
But trying to force every customer to do it will lose you more sales than you’ll get email addresses – and email addresses don’t pay the bills.
- Display all your payment methods (card logos etc)
If you leave any doubt in the mind of your customer they’ll use that as an excuse to walk away from their purchase.
This is especially true when it comes to the types of payments you offer.
No-one wants to get all the way through a checkout process only to find their preferred payment method isn’t accepted.
This is why you should display every type of payment you accept prominently on the checkout page.
For example, display the debit, credit card and digital wallet logos that you accept on the page where your customers enter their details.
- Include shipping details on the checkout page
Just as your customers want clear information on how they can pay for products, they want to know exactly what options are available for them when it comes to delivery.
Are they going to have to wait a week to get something delivered?
Do you offer next-day, or same-day delivery?
How about express options?
You should clearly display every available option to your customer and make it easy for them to choose a delivery option that fits around their lives.
Telling them they have to wait between 3-5 weeks with no specific information is a sure way to make them walk away from a checkout.
- Add more checkout buttons to pages
At the end of the day, a checkout button on a web page is no different to any other call-to-action button on a page.
It’s meant to make the customer take action.
So you should add more checkout buttons on your page so customers don’t have to keep scrolling up and down to get to the checkout in the first place.
Ideally you should have a checkout button at the top and bottom of a page.
For particularly long pages, you should also add a checkout button towards the middle as well.
- Consider adding a live chat to your checkout page
If your customer still has questions by the time they get to checkout, it could easily lose you a sale if the information isn’t readily available.
But sending them to a separate FAQ page runs the risk of them getting distracted and not returning to the checkout page.
Instead, you should consider adding a live chat function to your checkout page.
This way customers can get answers to their questions while remaining on the checkout page.
- Recommend related products on the checkout page
This isn’t so much about increasing conversions as it is about increasing conversion values.
But every little helps in e-commerce and displaying recommended related products on a checkout page can be a simple way of pushing a transaction value up.
- Create for mobile
More than two thirds of UK shoppers switched to mobile e-commerce in 2020.
By the second quarter of last year, only 5.3% of customers were shopping online using a desktop.
It should be standard practice now that your e-commerce website is built for mobile first, but this is especially true for optimising your checkout process for mobile.
- Make sure your checkout is secure
Any customer is going to be rightly hesitant about entering their card details into a website they aren’t 100% sure is secure.
So you need to reassure them by displaying your site’s security credentials prominently on the checkout page.
If you have a secure https website you’ll automatically have the padlock display next to your URL, but adding further information about your site’s security offers more confidence to consumers that they won’t have their card details stolen by using your checkout.
With 3D Secure now adding two step authentication to online purchases, it’s more important you display your security credentials to reassure customers their transaction will be secure.
- Increasing your revenue by improving your checkout experience
When you have a customer readily trying to give you money, you should make the experience as easy as possible.
Any hurdles or barriers to checkout need to be removed to ensure a smooth and efficient process for all your customers.
By failing to tackle the problem of abandoned carts, your business’ long term future could be put at serious risk.
