It should come as no surprise that the checkout process is one of the most critical parts of the customer journey. If it’s confusing, complicated or lengthy, you run the risk of shoppers abandoning their carts, which directly impacts your bottom line. As an ecommerce business owner, you need to ensure you provide customers with a seamless, user-friendly checkout experience.
Through my online business journey with numerous brands and research into conversion rate optimization, I’ve identified some key strategies to help optimize checkout to minimize cart abandonments. In this article, I’ll share what I have seen work for various brands – including simplified payment options, trust signals and more.
Streamline checkout forms
An overload of fields and information requests at checkout is one of the quickest ways to lose a sale.
- Prioritize essential fields – Only collect the bare minimum like name, email and address first. If you need optional fields like birthdate, phone number, etc., put them towards the bottom of your form.
- Use clear, concise field labels so customers know exactly what’s needed. For example, use simply “Address Line 1” instead of something vague like “Street Address”.
- Auto-populate info where possible using info from their accounts or past purchases so they don’t have to re-enter it. This instantly reduces friction.
By decluttering your checkout forms, you make the process smoother for customers so they’re more likely to complete their purchase.
Offer guest checkout
According to Baymard Institute, allowing guest checkout can reduce cart abandonment by 25%. Some customers don’t want to deal with remembering passwords or signing up for yet another account.
- Having a clear guest checkout option, potentially even defaulted as the main choice, will cater to these users.
- You can still optionally show them benefits of creating an account like order history or special discounts. Just don’t force it on them.
- Guest checkout with only essential field requirements helps users breeze through purchasing without friction. You can still capture their email address this way for future marketing.
Accommodating guest checkout is an easy win to remove a common point of friction during the purchase process.
Prioritize mobile optimization
With rising mobile traffic and purchases, optimizing checkout for mobile isn’t just ideal – it’s absolutely mandatory:
- Avoid clutter by placing things like coupons and promotions on separate pages instead of cramming everything into tiny screens.
- Use large, easy click buttons instead of links. Fingers aren’t as precise as mouse cursors.
- Confirm email addresses match to avoid typos delaying orders.
By focusing on mobile UX and conversion paths, checking out on-the-go can become quick and painless, and help you ring up more sales from phones and tablets.
Add progress trackers
On longer checkouts with multiple steps, adding a progress tracker keeps customers informed on where they’re at. Useful implementations:
- A simple step counter like “Step 1 of 3” works well at the top showing overall checkout progress.
- Some sites also use expanding bars that fill in with each step to indicate progress.
- Trackers set expectations so customers know what info remains instead of getting frustrated with a seemingly unending process.
Keeping customers “in the loop” via tracker visibility brings much needed transparency to complex checkouts when done right.
Offer multiple payment options
Customers have varying preferences, so you should cater to them with diverse payment methods:
- Provide popular options like PayPal, Stripe and Apple/Google Pay for maximum coverage. Support local favorites if selling internationally.
- Make sure options have clear icons so users can easily recognize their preferred providers.
- Ideally allow mixing various payment types like partial gift cards + remaining balance via credit card in a unified flow. This flexibility reduces checkout failure chances when customers want to use different sources.
Trying to force specific payment types and restricting options often deters buyers from finishing their orders. Cast a wide net instead with choice – it pays off.
Add trust signals
19% of shoppers have abandoned purchases due to trust concerns so it’s critical for conversion rates you install rich trust elements at checkout source. Useful examples:
- Secure badge icons from providers like Norton or McAfee indicating use of SSL encryption.
- Contact info like email, live chat, phone numbers so customers can get quick support for any issues.
- Social proof via recognizable brands you work with or great client reviews builds credibility via third parties vouching for your security and service.
Prominently displaying trust seals and gestures conveys professionalism and confidence in your operations – exactly what nervous buyers need to see for reassurance during checkout.
Bonus: Offer confirmation + recap page
Before finalizing payment, it helps to have a confirmation page clearly summarizing the order like:
- Items purchased
- Quantities
- Prices
- Shipping + tax costs
- Final total
Displaying an overview gives customers a failsafe last chance to:
- Review accuracy of their cart
- Check shipping address
- See final costs before paying
- Modify order if needed
This recap visibility right before money is exchanging hands provides peace of mind. In turn, that leads to increased conversion likelihood and fewer abandons from uncertainty or confusion.
Key Takeaways
Optimizing your checkout process boils down to simplicity, clarity and accommodating customer needs via:
- Simplified, decluttered checkout forms
- Guest checkout options
- Heavy focus on mobile optimization
- Progress step trackers
- Multiple payment types
- Rich trust signals and reassurance
- Confirmation recap before final submission
Monitor your checkout funnel carefully for where dropoffs occur. Then diagnose the pain points causing cart abandonments and use the strategies above as remedies targeted to those weak spots. The payoff through higher conversions is well worth the effort.
With some customer-centric checkout tweaks, you’ll have a solid chance of seeing your cart abandonment rates plummet. That then leads to extra sales and revenue flooding back into your business.