1-click Cash On Delivery

Disclaimer — as Amazon has patented the 1-Click so please refer to your legal team if you are trying to implement this.

In India, almost 60% of orders are placed via cash-on-delivery and this percentage increases to a whopping 90% for tier-II cities and close 75% during big sale days. Hence a lot of customers has to go through the same tedious flow which is meant for customers who are paying for their orders in advance while they simply could have just clicked on “1-Click checkout” button which will directly place the order for them.

Let’s understand the current flow and it’s cons before moving to new “1-Click checkout” flow.

Step 1: User always starts with viewing the product details and then click on “Buy Now” to purchase the item.

Step 2: After clicking on “Buy now” product gets added to the cart and you have to select the address to which product should be delivered.

Step 3: After selecting the address, you have to review the order summary and continue to payment section.

Step 4: This is the last and final step. Here you have to enter captcha details to finally confirm your order.

So to conclude, you need to perform three actions once you decide what you want to you buy. This process can be easily simplified by using “1-Click checkout” feature. All we need to do is to add a new “1-Click checkout” button and clicking on it will directly place order to your default address and phone number.

Here is the what an updated layout may look like

If you notice, the only change I have made is adding an “Info” icon in the current “Buy Now” button. Hovering on this info icon will inform user about where the item will be delivered in case he/she buys it now.

And, thats it! Now clicking on “Buy Now” will directly purchase the item for the user and a confirmation screen will be shown to the user about this purchase.

Cons

Well, this approach of “1-Click Cash-On-Delivery” seems the right solution at first but it has few cons.

Accidental orders

Users might accidentally click on the “Buy Now” button which will place the order for them.

Not having a default address OR deliver to a different address

Some amount of users may not have their primary setup with their account or they may want to deliver a particular item to a different address.

Seller not delivering on primary address

Lot of e-commerce website being a market place, it is a possibility that seller might not be delivering on the primary address of the user.

Summary

In the end, I still feel the ease of placing an order in just one click still trumps over the few cons I mentioned. These cons can be solved/minimised over time by making the system intelligent based on user’s behaviour and trends.