Member Article

Checkout Optimisation

Checkout, the final hurdle for online shoppers. The ecommerce industry talks a lot about optimising the shopping experience but there’s an erroneous perception that once a shopper makes it to the checkout then the purchase is as good as made. Not true. There is actually a high rate of basket abandonment at the check out, the reason is obvious: it’s where the credit card actually has to come out.

Recent research from IMRG found that checkout abandonment had remained high over the last few years:

Checkout abandonment, where a visitor has proceeded to the checkout but left before completing the purchase, fell from 34% in 2010 to 33% in 2011 and 32% in 2012. Although the annual trend is downward, in Q1 of 2013 it reached 37%, the highest it has been since IMRG and Capgemini started tracking it in Q1 of 2010.

No retailer will ever completely remove checkout abandonment, it’s a natural part of the shopping process – it’s the proverbial shopper picking something of the shelf and then putting it back. However if those abandonment rates can be improved we know that there can be significant impact on the businesses bottom line.

Here are three things every retailer should do to significantly improve conversion rates and reduce abandonment:

1 – Build confidence

The shopper needs to recognise that your store is trustworthy and that orders are in safe hands. Secure networks and trustmarks are obligatory but you don’t need to understand the technicalities or psychology behind them. Just know that customers who are reassured that your store can cater to their needs in a safe way will likely shop with you. Two suggestions to help you build confidence at the checkout are:

Promote a hotline: A hotline which is displayed prominently on the website shows the user they can make contact with the company with regard to any queries.

Advice on right to return: All users are legally entitled to right of return, but if the user has had a negative experience in the past, they will still hesitate before buying. Making it clear on the website that it’s easy to return goods can counteract this reluctance. An extended right to return beyond the mandatory 14 days is another great way to build confidence.

2 – Communicate benefits for the user

Often, services are highlighted on the home page but this should be reiterated during the checkout process to act as a sales-boosting unique selling point. Online retailer, Zalando offers a 100-day right to return for example. When faced with a generous offer during the checkout process, it’s difficult for customers to refuse and therefore encourages them to continue with the order. According to Manuel Ressel, conversion expert at WebArts, listing additional benefits and reinforcing them with a check mark suffices. He said: “Icons can visually enhance the additional benefits. A €0 icon and a reference to free shipping can convey the message of a free service more powerfully than a simple check mark.”

3 – Motivate users

Users need to be reminded of how easy the checkout process is. Reassure customers of the little effort required and remind them that by shopping with you, they’ve made a great choice.

Abandoned purchases:

Those are just three basic tips but of course there are hundreds of other ways of optimising the checkout process. Different tactics work for different retailers so it’s definitely worth doing A and B testing to find which strategy connects with your audience.

Reducing the abandoned purchase rate to zero is an impossible aim in online retail. However researchers recommend that you pay particular attention to customer retention. Studies in the USA have shown that customers who do abandon a basket are significantly less likely to come back to the store than those shoppers who do complete a purchase.

How do you optimise the checkout process? Let us know in the comments or @trustedshopsUK

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Phillip Smith .