Best Ways to Optimize Your eCommerce Checkout for Conversion

There are many important elements relevant to the success of an eCommerce website. The checkout page, however, is probably the most important one. This is a page that is designed to drive conversions, and it is the exact place where your potential customers turn into actual buyers.

Of course, your website also needs a user-friendly interface and an attractive layout. However, the only purpose of these elements is to eventually bring visitors to the checkout page. Marketers put a lot of effort into increasing the website traffic but all these efforts can be wasted if this traffic doesn’t make it past check-out pages.

The success of any eCommerce shop to a largely depends on its cart abandonment rate. People may choose some items, add them to their cart, but then change their minds and not go through with the purchase. Quite often, they change their mind because of the checkout page that isn’t convenient enough or isn’t designed in the right way. This is called friction. The average abandonment rate for eCommerce stores from all sectors is 76.9%. Even if your checkout process is really efficient, many of your shoppers may still leave before completing a purchase. Therefore, we recommend that you put some effort into removing friction from your checkout process so that it won’t contribute to the increase in the cart abandonment rate.

Why People Abandon Shopping Carts

To figure out how you can increase conversions and optimize the checkout process, let’s think of why your potential customers abandon their cards, in the first place. Obviously, some of them are just not ready to make a purchase. Some of them just don’t have a clear intention to buy anything, while others might be discouraged by the shipping costs. There are also people who decide to compare prices or to visit a brick-and-mortar store and to buy the chosen products there. Quite often, people also abandon their carts because they cannot find the preferred payment option or experience some technical difficulties.

As you can see, there are many reasons why your conversion rates may decline, and you can solve some of these issues by simply tweaking your checkout page. High-converting checkout pages are designed to encourage and help potential customers to make a decision. To understand what your website’s problem is, ask yourself a few important questions:

• Do you offer competitive prices? Does the price correspond to the offered value?
• Are your customers aware of your shipping costs before proceeding to checkout? Are the shipping costs reasonable?
• Is there anything that makes the checkout process more complicated or slows it down?
• Do you have the necessary range of payment options?

“If you answer these questions, you’ll be able to detect the most problematic issues and make your website visitors more likely to purchase something from you,” explains Rebecca Adams, a digital marketer at a writing services review website Best Writers Online. “However, when optimizing anything on your website, you should not only determine problems but also set clear goals.”

What Is a Good Conversion Rate for eCommerce?

Given that a conversion rate is one of the key KPIs for eCommerce websites, many marketers want to know whether their conversion rates are high enough. “There is no universal standard of a good conversion rate that could serve as an example for eCommerce sites from all niches,” notes Janis Payne, a digital marketer at a writing services review website Online Writers Rating. Average conversion rates depend on the average order value, type of product, size of the company, industry, segments of the audience, etc. 

According to statistics, an average conversion rate for the U.S. eCommerce sites is 2.63%. Online-only companies tend to demonstrate higher conversion rates than multi-channel businesses, and mobile conversions have demonstrated steady growth during the last few years. Desktops, however, are still 164% more likely to drive conversions.

How to Optimize Your Checkout Page

1. Try single-page checkout
   Some people claim that single-page checkouts covert better, while others state that you should choose multi-page checkouts. The truth is that both of these approaches work well for some businesses and don’t work for others. Most eCommerce shops use multi-page checkouts. However, you shouldn’t be afraid to experiment. If your multi-page checkout doesn’t perform well, try the single-page approach.

A single-page checkout process motivates customers to quickly complete a transaction. It’s simpler because customers can quickly provide all the necessary information on one page, making fewer clicks. According to research, if customers need to do fewer clicks, it positively impacts the conversion rate.

1. Be clear about the costs
   One of the most common reasons why people abandon their shopping carts is that businesses are not clear about the total cost of a purchase. For instance, the shipping costs can have a significant impact on your visitors’ decisions. About 50% of eCommerce businesses offer free shipping. We recommend that you include all costs upfront so that your customers won’t see the shipping cost at the last moment.
2. Don’t use mandatory sign-ups
   When a website asks visitors to create an account, they might simply choose to leave. According to statistics, 30% of consumers abandon their carts when asked to sign-up before checkout. First, this process can take a lot of time. Secondly, many users are not comfortable with sharing their personal information.

Of course, all eCommerce businesses want to collect customer data to use it in their marketing campaigns. However, it’s important to understand that not everyone wants to receive your newsletters and promotions. If your customers can skip the registration process, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.

1. Use the sense of urgency
   The fear of missing out (FOMO) and urgency can help you boost conversions. People don’t want to miss out on good deals, and you can use this psychological feature when designing your checkout page. First, you can use coupons and ask visitors to enter their discount codes. Secondly, you can limit the time visitors have to use these codes. You can also display the discount price of items added to a shopping cart and show stock levels to encourage your potential customers to complete a transaction.
2. Optimize your checkout page for mobile
   Mobile is used for online shopping more and more often, with over 60% of smartphone owners using their devices for shopping. Even though mobile eCommerce websites demonstrate lower conversion rates than desktop ones, you can still miss a lot of customers if you don’t take mobile users into account. We recommend that you put some effort into designing a straightforward and clear mobile checkout page.

Mobile users are also a reason why you should include “Add to wishlist” or “Save” buttons on your website — some visitors may want to choose a product on the desktop, and then complete the purchase from their phone.

Final Thoughts

Your checkout page hugely impacts your conversion rate. There are many reasons why customers may not complete their purchases and abandon their shopping carts. If you optimize your checkout process, you will be able to address some of the most common problems and to encourage your customers to complete the transaction.

We recommend that you keep in mind our tips and make sure that the checkout process is as simple as possible. Be clear about the total cost of a purchase and shopping costs. Provide different payment options and optimize your checkout page for mobile. Enable your visitors to save items they’re interested in for later and don’t forget to test different design solutions so that you can choose the most effective one.