Every visitor runs through your checkout process with ease and getting your goods to consumers is a breeze… The dream of every e-commerce shop owner. Abandon rates in the checkout process are costing merchants thousands of dollars. Often times checkout processes are more complicated than they have to be, with little to no help given to the consumer are the most common reasons for consumers not to complete the checkout process.
Here are the TOP 4 ways to eliminate shopping cart abandon rates:
1. Design
By extracting the checkout process as far as possible the user can´t be distracted from any other content. A look Amazon’s checkout process will show you that they don´t even allow consumers to click “back”. The only way to go back is to use the buttons of your browser.
Not all e-commerce shops extract the whole checkout process, but the idea of Amazon is to tempt the user NOT to break-off.
2. OnPage or Multipage?
Best practice is to split up the checkout process into several steps. A complete checkout on one page will overwhelm many visitors. It´s easier for most visitor to break down serveral small barriers instead of one big barrier.
A great example how this is done using web 2.0 styles is the Magento Shopping Cart.
3. Gain trust, answer questions
3.1 Help your customers
Don´t let your visitor alone during the checkout process. Most of all visitors are worried to do something wrong. Every step needs a description. For big problems, offer an easy to use hotline or a live chat service. But it´s also important to describe pricing and shipping details directly on the page. Don’t make your clients guess.
3.2 Gain trust
To gain trust from your visitor you first need a professionally designed shop. The keywords here are quality and security. Use security seals from BBB, eTrust or McAfee. Use SSL certificates to give visitors a secure environment to do their shopping.
Show them also which payment methods you accept. Most importantly, accept all payment options. Not allowing your visitors to pay with American Express Credit Cards will decrease your sales.
4. After-Sale Service
The order is sent, and now?
Inform your customer about the next steps. Send a order confirmation email. Tell them when the product will be sent and when it will be delivered and where the customer can contact you if there are any questions.
This also is the best time to ask for feedback.
5. Summary
There many placements in the checkout process which can be optimized, but there are just as many things which can go wrong. Analyze the exit pages of your e-commerce shop and find the problems on this sites. Try to understand your target group and collect feedback.
