Optimise Your Checkout Page With These 5 Simple Steps

You have it all. Cart abandonment email sequence. Retargeting campaigns. Your landing and product pages are thoroughly optimised for conversions.

And yet, many users still abandon their carts as soon as they reach your checkout page.

It's frustrating as hell. All the hard work that goes into attracting new customers vanishes when the transaction is never finalised; after all, your revenue doesn't increase based on how many people *almost* purchased your products.

Could a poorly-designed checkout page be the reason behind it?

Here's the thing: if it's too difficult to go through the checkout process, guess what: people won't go through with it. And, of course, safety plays a big role here. Even though there were 1.92 billion online shoppers in 2019, people still are anxious about sharing their card details with online merchants.

The solution is simple: checkout process optimisation, which comes down to one thing - making it as easy and safe as possible for customers to buy. Follow these five strategies to start optimising your checkout page today:

Enable editing 

Give users the option to edit their basket at any given stage of their customer journey. For example, if someone's about to confirm their order and they have 20x of the same item in their cart, let them change the amount before paying - as opposed to the user having to go back to that item's page and adjust the amount that way.

Screenshot Source: UserZoom

Offer multiple payment options 

Some 8% of people abandon the checkout page because they can’t find the payment option they want. And another 4% leave if their credit card is declined.

It was expected that by the end of 2019 nearly 2.1 billion consumers would have used an eWallet to either make a payment or send money. But let's not forget PayPal, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and possibly even cryptocurrency. Make sure you're prepared to accept at least a few of the main options. 

Screenshot Source: BigCommerce

Allow guest registration 

Don't ask for registration upfront. For most purchases, you'll have to collect personal and billing details anyway so once the purchase is complete, ask customers to add a password to create their account. Encourage customers to create an account by highlighting the benefits of doing so by letting them know that if they do, they can easily track their order.

Nixon allows the guest checkout process while giving users the option to create an account while placing the order:

Screenshot Source: UserZoom

Voucher codes 

If you have a voucher field, then it's inevitable that some people will go searching for the promo code. So why not just auto-apply a live code or let users know if there are currently no promotions available?

Avoid surprise costs

This is the worst thing you can do to your customers. 23% of abandoned carts come from customers being surprised by a total order cost they were unable to calculate upfront.

If you can’t offer free shipping, then show clearly what items will cost once people buy them. And make sure your shopping cart page always reflects the final price.

Similarly, if you offer free shipping and returns, or low delivery costs, make this clear on every page of your site.

Screenshot Source: Spiralyze

The bottom line:

An effective checkout experience takes very little time & effort to complete. Can you honestly say that about your checkout page?

Remember, it's the little things that make up for great results. You may be thinking that by not offering the guest registration you encourage customers to create an account but in reality, you're losing sales.

Test, don't guess.

Have you ever come across the perfect checkout process? Share your thoughts in the comment section below!