Revamp Checkout Experience: Let Not Be There Any Abandon Cart During Holiday Season

The biggest nightmare for every merchant that has often become a reality is checkout abandonment due to the lack of a seamless checkout experience. I understand it’s really painful to see customers adding the item to the cart reaching the checkout page but leaving the site without completing the purchase.

How to reduce Checkout abandonment is one thing never to be overlooked. Even though we eliminate those interested in browsing or just comparison shopping. We can still bring a significant percentage of shoppers back for purchase.

Moreover, poor checkout experience leads to a high rate of cart abandonment. It can emerge as a setback to your business goals. Nevertheless, this article digs deep into how not to mess up the checkout experience.

Knowing Product Purchase Didn’t Pass The Checkout Page Hurts A Lot. But It Won’t Anymore

Why Does Customer Leave Checkout Incomplete

It’s essential to understand unfavorable factors in shoppers’ journey that come into the picture, and eventually, the product is not purchased.

• Customers are clueless about product availability, even trying hard to find it.
• They find the product is out of stock and end up choosing an alternative but hardly like it.
• Lack of sufficient payment methods or the preferred ones.
• The homepage has an overwhelming number of ads and other distracting pop-ups.
• Unable to complete checkout due to tech snag.

The points mentioned above make shopping equivalent to a hard nut to crack. Hence, it turns them furious, too furious to continue shopping.

Why Do Most Checkout Page Fail To Deliver

Let The Checkout Page Be Distraction Free

Eliminate all sorts of unwanted links on the checkout page. After all, you don’t want a shopper to click on a blog post link and forget about paying for the product.

Also, another approach that will keep customers hooked despite a few minor distractions is free shipping. Free shipping is the most influential factor as no customer wants to miss the deal. Hence, capable of pushing customers to purchase the item despite a few hiccups during the shopping experience.

Deliver a Smooth Checkout Experience With Below Strategies

• Don’t shock customers with extra charges that get added on behalf of local taxes. An effective approach will be asking to sign up so that other charges can be included before the product is added to the cart.

Image credit: targetbay

• The customer information gathering form needs to be optimized. Add the field that will capture only the required data, nothing extra. Moreover, short forms don’t put off the customers and important information is easily captured.
• Time consuming processes never delight customers. It is better to keep checkout a single page process. Else, adding a progress bar will at least keep customers informed about how close they are to complete the checkout.
• The page load time of the checkout page to be under 3 seconds will be in your best interests. After all, if a customer is ready to pay, why make him wait unnecessarily.

• Intrusive advertising is always a big no on the checkout page or right a step before checkout. Unwanted upselling pop ups might redirect customers to other sites. Such interruptions hamper the seamless checkout experience.
• As a buyer we are all concerned about price to some degree. It’s even a decisive factor for many of us. Therefore, displaying price in dollars to a Chinese customer is illogical. This issue can be sorted out with a multi currency option.

Let Customer Trust You As Much As Their Spouse

No wonder you would not like to meet and converse with anyone you don’t trust and forget about paying him even a single penny. Same applies with customers; how can you expect them to hand over sensitive credentials without seeing signs of trust.

Opting the below strategies will boost customer confidence in your store as safe enough for shopping.

• The use of SSL certificate ensures customers every bit of data transfer between server and browser is encrypted and secure.

image credit: kinsta

• Display full contact information at the site footer and a minimum one contact in the site header. As a result, customers need not worry about whom to contact for queries. Also, relevant contact details rule out the suspicion of being a fraudulent site.
• Reviews have relatively high trust scores. Therefore, never overlook the importance of positive (the lengthy the better) reviews. Mention them on product pages above the fold. Internal image

Trust and Transparency is Key To Winning Customer Loyalty

• Mention the media coverage in your about us page. Third party praising your worth is beneficial for your brand. Moreover, it sounds unbiased.
• Another important parameter that sparks trust among customers is return policy. Keep its link in the footer. A customer must never fear losing money.
• Another critical parameter that sparks trust among customers is the return policy. Keep its link in the footer. A customer must never fear losing money.
• Adding social media links does the magic. It reveals how big your following is and what people love about your brand. Keep them in the footer conforming website theme. It makes them look apt and appealing.
• The About Us has to include your journey so far to ensure you have been long enough in business to be trusted as a genuine player.
• The checkout page is where you must give the last shot of trust with at least one trust badge that addresses payment security.

The aforementioned pointers brings peace of mind to customers. As a result, no hesitation before buying the products. Moreover, trust issues are the leading concern, and customers avoid buying from that online store.

Abandoned Checkout Email – The Solid Plan To Bring Back The Customers

The sad situation of incomplete checkout can be dealt with by a smart email. This email will contain a direct product link and a soon to be over discount offer to grab customer attention. Hence, it will save customers time as there is no need to navigate to the product page again.

Some impressive number that speaks about success of abandoned checkout email

• 4 in 10 abandoned checkout email are opened
• 5 in 10 abandoned checkout emails have brought customers back on site and they have purchased the items.

With that said, adhering to below tips ensures a compelling abandoned checkout email

• In a friendly tone introduce urgency in the form of FOMO. It can be done by saying the product is at a discount for the first 100 or something buyers.
• Share a good snap of the product that was left in the cart. Make it easy for shoppers to remember the product without thinking hard.

Image credit: sendgrid.com

• Another cool FOMO trick is to tell free shipping on the item will soon end. After all, no customer will ignore free shipping.
• Stress on product variants. Maybe the customer was in a hurry and couldn’t find the right color.
• Attach positive reviews. Social validation boosts confidence and eliminates doubt about a product’s worth.
• Most emails are read on mobile devices. Hence, making abandoned checkout email mobile friendly will not only boost chances of getting clicked but won’t frustrate buyers to unsubscribe.
  • Avoid excessively big images that aren’t optimized to look nice on mobile screens
  • Keeping the CTA button sticky means no more unnecessarily scrolling.
• The ideal time to send an abandoned checkout email is just after an hour. Further delays dilutes the effectiveness of the email.
• Send at least three emails. It will not make a single email big enough to be discarded.
  • First email to remind about the item left in the cart.
  • Second one must display a sense of urgency with discounts and create FOMO with superb reviews.
  • The last one should be focused on how that item would enhance the lifestyle and make him a trendsetter.

Mobile Checkout Experience – Remove The Friction Make It Flawless

Mobile device ability to deliver on the go shopping experience lured buyers to an unprecedented level. As a result your target audience has majorly adapted it as a medium for ecommerce transactions and remaining ones don’t display any qualms.

With that said, no ambitious online merchant would overlook or delay it. Having the right strategy is vital and following will help you combat checkout abandonment

• An annoying thing to be taken care of during checkout on mobile devices are accidental clicks. Moreover, someone in a hurry will really not entertain it. As a result, loss of sales.
• The use of auto fills is must considering smaller screen size. Make it easy and quick to input complete information.
• New users find it a hassle to sign up using mobile devices. Hence, offering guest checkout and social media login will be time saving and a good first impression.
• Keep content on the smartphone’s checkout page to minimum with only relevant information. This is helpful to keep customers focused on checkout completion.
• All logged in users should be able to avail one click checkout option. No need to input the payment and delivery related information.
• Use of mobile’s built date selection UI for date selection helps customers pick the correct date in the first attempt.
• Give customers a chance to review the order before purchase. Therefore, no more ordering wrong items or getting delivered at incorrect addresses by mistake.

Are There Plentiful Payment Methods? – There Must Be

Yes, please don’t be shy and add only a few payment methods. It might sound logical from a seller point of view to have added popular payment gateways. But still there is a chance of missing on preferred payment methods for some buyers.

Enabling transactions using multiple payment gateways rule out scenarios of losing sales due to specific payment methods missing. As per statistics your 8% customers might not purchase items due to unavailability of a particular payment method.

It is always recommended to opt for payment gateways capable of processing payments in huge numbers of currencies. As a result, You allow customers to pay in their currency.

In case of downtime, customers have the option to pay via other payment methods. Hence, you don’t lose a conversion opportunity to the competitors. More importantly, allowing customers to sell in multiple currencies increases the customer base and extends business penetration among customers in all corners of the world.

Payment must be cakewalk and guarantee safety unconditionally

Conclusion – Fixing Checkout Abandonment Boost Conversion Rate

This blog navigates the nitty-gritty stuff on how to reduce checkout abandonment. Adhering to the aforementioned tips and tricks will ensure your checkout process by making it seamless and nothing left to bug the customers. As a result, the checkout abandonment rate drops significantly low.