The checkout process is the final step in the purchasing journey. It’s where you turn a potential customer into a buyer, and this conversion rate directly affects your bottom line. If checkout isn’t a smooth experience for customers, they’ll leave and never come back. With so much riding on each sale, it makes sense to do everything possible to increase your checkout conversion rates.
Reasons for online shopping cart abandonment
It is no secret that online shopping carts are abandoned on a regular basis. Here are the most widespread reasons behind cart abandonment according to WorldPay:
While many factors contribute to this, the most common reasons for abandoning are related to the checkout phase. To improve the checkout experience for your customers, use these simple tips that will help you improve customer satisfaction during the buying process.
Optimize your website for mobile devices
Site visitors should be able to explore your website and make purchases with ease. Mobile-friendly websites are a must for today’s shoppers as 65% of clicks on paid Google search results come from mobile devices.
What exactly makes a website mobile-friendly?
- Text should be readable without zooming;
- Pages should not take too long to load;
- Page layouts are responsive;
- Links and buttons should be easily clickable with one hand;
- Images are resized appropriately for viewing on smartphones;
- Videos play properly on small screens.
If you are not sure if your website is mobile-responsive, test it with this Google’s mobile-friendly test.
Secure the checkout process
Secure transactions are an important part of the user’s shopping experience. Customers expect their information to stay secure when they make a purchase online, and if your site isn’t secure, you risk losing customers and damaging your reputation in the process.
Use HTTPS on all pages of the checkout process. This ensures that no one can intercept sensitive information like passwords and credit card numbers during transmission between the customer and merchant servers. You should also use SSL certificates (or TLS certs) to secure these transmissions.
Don’t force users to sign-up
Consumers don’t like to be forced into signing up for an account if they are only looking to make one purchase. It can feel like you are being pushed away from completing your transaction and will cause many customers to abandon their carts altogether or not come back later on when they have more time.
Here are two ways of how you can stimulate your customers to sign-up without losing the sale:
Create a user account automatically when people make purchases. Assign them random passwords and send the information with their order receipts in mailboxes.
Ask for registration after they’ve made a purchase. By that stage, they already entered most of your needs – all they need now is to choose an appropriate password.
Always leave your customers a choice to checkout as a guest. Guest checkout pages allow users who don’t have an account on your site to proceed with their purchase. If a user isn’t sure that your site will offer everything they need or provide good service after purchase, then having them sign-up might be too much for them. So try letting customers checkout without creating an account first.
Use retargeting to bring customers back
Retargeting is a powerful tool for e-commerce companies to bring back customers who have abandoned their shopping carts. It’s also an excellent way to reach people who are browsing your site but haven’t made any purchases yet.
The best part about retargeting is that you’re only showing ads to individuals who are already interested in your products, meaning you can spend less on advertising and more on developing new content or working with affiliates.
You can use different strategies for your retargeting campaign:
- Retargeting with ads: you track non-purchasing visitors by adding a pixel or a Javascript tag to your site. When these visitors search for a keyword similar to yours, your banner or PPC ad will appear.
- Retargeting with email: is pretty much the same, however, instead of showing them ads, you target them through an email reminder.
Use Shopping Cart Recovery Emails
Shopping cart recovery emails help customers recover any abandoned carts or items they put into their shopping cart but did not purchase.
Here is how you should approach writing these types of emails:
- Provide details about what exactly the customer has left behind in the shopping cart.
- Let them know they can still complete their order by clicking on a link within your email.
- To increase chances of conversion, offer something extra, for example, free shipping for orders above $80, free returns, discount for the next purchase, etc.
Here’s a great example of a successful and engaging shopping cart recovery email from skincare brand Go-To:
Implement a single-page checkout process
The single-page checkout process is a great way to streamline your product sales. It saves them time and energy by only having to input necessary information once. They’ll be less likely to leave if they have everything they need in front of them. There’s no surprise at the bottom about what the total purchase price will be because it has already been laid out for them before even clicking “submit.”
A study conducted by Baymard Institute found that 67% of shoppers abandon their carts because they are too long or complicated to complete. To help your customers successfully make purchases on your website, consider using a streamlined checkout process with only one page for payment processing.
With the Shopala Checkout tool, customers can checkout within 30 seconds on their mobile device. All they need to do is just complete contact and shipping info and pay with selected providers. Fast and easy! This will allow you to increase conversions and sales while reducing cart abandonment rates.
Check out My Sainted Aunt Case Study to see how they boost their conversion rate by a staggering 281% using Shopala Checkout.
Contact us to learn more about how you can benefit from using a fast checkout solution by Shopala.
