Increase Checkout Conversion Part 3: Trust and Transparency
James Pruden
Managing Director at Xigen, Business Investor, Digital Expert & Entrepreneur.
eCommerce checkout that's streamlined for simple, faster user experience (UX) will give customers lower friction shopping experiences and is vital for reducing cart abandonment and increasing conversion rates.
Important as checkout UX design is (desktop and mobile), it will be for little if your customers don't trust your checkout because it's not localised, it has no social proof, no trust symbols, isn't offering the right payment methods or free delivery and easy returns.
Reassuring customers that your online store is trustworthy, showing that your business is diligent and communicating that effectively, will put customers at ease and, coupled with outstanding UX, give them more outstanding shopping experiences.
Let's take a closer look at trust and transparency and how getting it right will help to increase conversion rates and customer retention. ????
Localisation
It stands to reason that if your eCommerce store is only available in the English language, then consumers who don't speak English simply won't shop with you. This will cut off potentially lucrative opportunities in foreign marketplaces, not to mention eroding brand reputation for poor customer experience.
In Europe, 74% of eCommerce checkouts are not translated into local languages.1
Localisation at checkout will help to improve conversion rates. Showing prices in local currencies, including local taxes and offering payment methods preferred in particular regions will better engage consumers leading to greater trust and transparency.
Here are some examples that illustrate this in Europe:
A report by the payment processing platform Stripe shows that offering local payment methods lead to higher conversion rates. They analysed payment volumes from three Hong Kong-based eCommerce businesses operating in the Netherlands. ??
Stripe found that when the three HK companies introduced the popular Dutch payment method, iDEAL, payment volume in the Netherlands increased by 79% in the eight months between September 2019 and April 2020.3
Source: Stripe
This shows that localising your eCommerce store for preferred local payment methods can positively impact conversion rates.
Social proof
Social proof in eCommerce is leveraging your customers' positive feedback about their experiences with your brand and business, on social media or on review sites such as Google Reviews and Trust Pilot.
Showing positive social and review content about your products, services and customer experience to consumers at various stages in their shopping journeys will help to improve transparency and trust.?
82% of consumers were more likely to purchase a product with positive star ratings.?
Having generic social proof embedded on your eCommerce store's pages can help reassure customers. But tailoring social proof content to customer position in the conversion funnel will be more relevant and more valuable for them, and as a result will have greater impact.
For example, on landing pages show positive feedback content about general CX; on product pages show positive product reviews and praise for products from social media; and importantly, in-cart and at checkout show short reviews and ratings about positive customer experiences about delivery, returns and after-sales customer service and support.
Using social proof at the right place at the right time will help build consumer trust for increased micro conversions, especially during the checkout process.
Localised social proof enables you to display different social proof content to consumers in different territories, so it's in the right language, using familiar vernacular and cultural references for greater local engagement and trust.?
Security & Trust Symbols
Perhaps one of the biggest concerns for new customers when they reach your online store's checkout is security—can they trust their personal and payment information to a brand and business that they may not have used before?
The way to help alleviate this hesitation (friction) is to reassure customers by showing them very clear, visible reassurances that your store and checkout process are secure and trustworthy. ????
61% of shoppers did not purchase from online stores because there was no visible proof of security.?
The most common way to reassure customers about checkout security is simply with a security socket layer (SSL) certificate to show that your online store has robust protection for secure, encrypted financial transactions and defence from data theft and hackers.
SSL certification is shown in the address bar with a green padlock symbol and the 'https' prefix.
A trust symbol, or trust badge, is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a marque that you place on your web pages and during the checkout process that helps to instil consumer trust. They are a simple and effective way to reassure customers that your business takes their data and payment security seriously.
Trust symbols that are familiar have more weight than those that are less well known. For example, the Google Trusted Store badge is powerful because Google is a well-known brand associated with online best practice.
To obtain the Google Trusted Store marque eCommerce businesses must first meet Google's requirements . Google will run tests to ensure eCommerce stores meet their standards for shopping experiences.
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Once approved, customers will receive surveys from Google after making purchases. The Trusted Store marque is then awarded when enough positive customer feedback has been received.
In addition to security and third-party accreditation, other trust symbols can communicate instantly with customers, helping build trust and increase engagement. These can include CX guarantees such as '100% satisfaction', satisfaction guarantees such as '30-day money back', and reassurance about returns if a customer is hesitant about a product's size, colour, style or any other attribute:??
Avoid Price Shock
A recent Baymard Institute survey revealed that forcing customers to create an account was the second biggest reason for checkout abandonment, with the main reason being unexpected additional costs, or 'price shock'.????
Showing customers their cart as they shop will help to prevent the biggest cause of abandonment - price shock. Price shock is when a potential customer who has not been about to view their cart as they shop finally views their shopping total price only to find that shipping and/or taxes have been added making a higher total to pay.???
As the graph below shows, nearly half of online retailers cited price shock as the reason for checkout abandonment.??
Popular UK Payment Methods
As we have seen with localised payment methods in non-anglophone marketplaces, offering the most popular payment methods in a territory has a positive impact on conversion rates—and this of course applies equally for the UK marketplace.
We conducted extensive research with over 5000 UK eCommerce businesses across sectors and found that, when it comes to payment methods, card payments are still the most popular way to pay when shopping online.
However, PayPal has become more popular in recent years, as have deferred payments (such as Klarna). Although Google Pay and Amazon Pay digital wallets are less popular, their use is gaining momentum: ?
Source: Xigen
Free Delivery & Free Returns
Offering free delivery is well understood to reduce abandonment rates and increase conversions.
44% of abandoned transactions happened because customers perceived shipping costs to be too high.?
The cost of free delivery should be factored into the price of your products. Customers are often willing to pay a little more for products than pay a perceived extra amount for delivery.
An alternative approach is to offer a free delivery threshold, where if customers spend over a specified amount they will get free delivery—this has the added benefit of helping to increase average order values as customers buy another product to get free delivery.
Offering free returns can also help to nudge customers across the checkout line, especially if your products have variable attributes. Amazon Prime Wardrobe is a good example of the 'try before you buy' approach.?
Ensuring that free delivery and returns are clearly flagged in-cart and at checkout will help reassure customers about making a purchase.
Final Thought
The checkout process is where customers are most likely to abandon their shopping journey, for a variety of reasons, as we have explored in this article. But it's worth remembering that zero abandonment is not a realistic expectation as consumers window shop, do research, save items for later etc. so have very low buying intent at that moment.
If the sharp end of your conversion funnel is its weakest point all the hard work of SEO and marketing, conversion rate optimisation , A/B testing, slick product pages, and nurturing customer relationships will be wasted.????
Localising your checkout for language and payment methods, leveraging social proof and displaying trust symbols will help reassure and engage customers in the final and crucial step in the shopping journey.?
How transparent is your eCommerce checkout? Does it inspire consumer trust? If you would like to learn more about how your checkout can better engage your customers, then get in touch today for a chat with one of our eCommerce experts .
Sources
1 https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts.pdf
2 https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts.pdf
3 https://go.stripe.global/rs/072-MDK-283/images/The_state_of_European_checkouts.pdf
? https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-proof-software/
? https://www.metrilo.com/blog/optimize-checkout
? https://www.mymoid.com/increase-ecommerce-conversion-rate-checkout/