The Importance of Post Checkout in eCommerce

Isaiah Bollinger

Isaiah Bollinger

So many companies are obsessed with their eCommerce project from a homepage to check out perspective and undervalue the importance of the post-checkout process. I get that getting more people to check out is critical for growth, but neglecting the post-checkout eCommerce process could ironically lead to a lack of sales!
Let’s examine some of the areas that are critical.

Order Confirmation

A high-quality order confirmation email that has useful information cannot be overlooked. Once the order is placed there should be a clear order success page and order confirmation email that gives the customer confidence they made the right decision. If this process is underwhelming the customer could get nervous and cancel their order!

Order Status Updates

This is an area I think many companies completely fall short on. Ideally, I think you would have two parts to this. One is emails or text notifications keep the customer updated upon delivery status and the process of order confirmation. The other is this process emulated online. Probably the best example of this is Dominos eCommerce experience seen below. You can see the steps of your order online!
dominos pizza tracker
 

Packaging

The quality of the packaging can go a long way. If it’s in a beat up box or feels cheap as you unpack your order this can greatly ruin the experience of your product. I highly recommend investing in quality packaging to ensure the package is safe, secure, doesn’t break and feels high quality.
This is a great shipping infographic demonstrating the value of packaging and delivery!

Fast Delivery

How fast are you delivering? Amazon has set the status quo for two days. Consumers now expect fast delivery.
You may not be able to offer free 2-day shipping, but you might be able to get close to that and offer free 4-day shipping or something within the ballpark of what is expected. Having a strong integration with a fulfillment solution like Shipstation or 3PL could be the difference between happy customers and angry customers who felt the shipping took way too long.
If it takes forever to ship your product, you may be losing out on repeat customers and losing a customer for life, often times they may never come back after a bad experience.

Good Return Policy / Operations

There are a lot of customers who buy things with the plan to return them. This is obviously not ideal to have a lot of returns but frankly its part of dealing with consumers. If you have a strict no return policy you could be alienating a huge portion of customers. Sometimes you just can’t offer returns for various reasons, but if you can, having a good policy and easy process for returns could lead to a lot more customers.
Platforms like Returnly can help with this.

Account Login

It should be easy for customers to log in, reorder, or view the status of their order. Having quality account pages that are helpful post-purchase is key to making the customer feel secure with their purchase. The account pages are often overlooked and never customized to the business. This is a huge mistake.
Making sure there is a lot of clarity on account login and what can be accomplished can go a long way. Also, spending some time improving the UX of account pages will also help, just sticking to standard templates may not be enough. There may also need to be integrations in place to ensure customers can see accurate data in their login or perform certain necessary actions.

Validation / Compliance (Depending on Company)

Some companies may require some sort of validation or compliance such as validating a PO for a purchase, validating age, or verifying you have special pricing etc. Implementing and automating this validation or compliance could remove a huge barrier for customers to more easily buy online, increasing overall sales and convenience.

Customer Service, LiveChat & FAQ

Having good customer service, live chat, and FAQ available for customers to either self-serve or quickly get to the right answer is key. Sometimes human intervention is necessary, so making it too hard to get to a person can be frustrating. Live chat can do a lot, and each year its getting better so this is also another great solution that a huge percentage of people want!
millennial customers live chat simple queries
According to Customer Care, as the chart shows above, many people prefer live chat, especially for simpler queries. What I think is often missed is that simply throwing up live chat is not enough, it has to be well handled and supported so that answers are provided in a timely fashion.
I would also suggest companies look into solutions like Zendesk or Kustomer to help with FAQ and other support related solutions.
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