How To Optimize Your Checkout Pages To Prevent Shopping Cart Abandonment
Let us discuss the ever prevalent e-commerce shopping cart abandonment situation today. There is not a single e-commerce site in the WWW untouched by the cart abandonment issue. If you draw a parallel between a brick and mortar store and an online store it would be funny to imagine a person abandoning their shopping cart seconds before billing in a supermarket (special circumstances like their car getting towed away do not count here). Why is the difference so stark? One word — Trust. Insecurity and lack of motivation are the two most common drivers of shopping cart abandonment.
But all hope is not lost! You can perform a few tests on your checkout pages to maximize conversion and minimize cart abandonment.
Why Test ?
When a customer decides to add an item to a shopping cart, half the battle is already won. This is when a site user transforms into a potential customer. And by optimizing the checkout pages, you are broadening the prospect of converting potential customers into buyers.
What To Test ?
Guest Checkout vs. Login Checkout
Most of the times when I shop online, I am either on a budget or on the fence about the items in my cart. And when the site suddenly asks for my user credentials, I stop dead in my tracks and run away. So you should find ways to coax customers like me to continue pushing their virtual carts forward and make the process breezy and as friction free as possible for them.
Michael Kors does not put pressure on its visitors to create a new account with them but subtly throws in the idea of creating an account the next time; maybe. Providing guest checkout as a default option is a good practice and will work like magic on fence sitters like me.
Or keep it extremely simple like Bonobos.
The Checkout Process Flow
The last thing you want to do is confuse a customer who has taken heart to reach the checkout page. It is a good idea to perform checkout process flow analysis to ensure that the checkout page is guiding in nature. A/B test different process flow designs, the placement of buttons and usability. You can draw inspiration from the Dyptique Paris checkout process flow: neat and laid on the line.
Trust and Security Seals
Trust and security seals are anxiety busting magical elements you should definitely incorporate into your checkout pages. As customers provide sensitive information like credit card and bank account details, it is crucial to assure them that their details are safe with you.
There are several online surveys that tell you what SSLs are the most trusted by customers. Here is one from whichssl.com. Take a strategic approach by picking a SSL most trusted by customers and then A/B test their placement and design to create a trust inducing environment for your customer at checkout.
Single Page Checkout /Multi Page Checkout
It sure saves the customer plenty of time when you provide them a single page checkout experience. But in the defense of multi page checkouts, they are clutter free and guiding in nature. But remember — customers are guided extensively by their intuition when they shop online. So it is not wise to copy a successful model and make it work for you. Create context specific checkout page designs and A/B test them against each other.
PS: Single or multiple, it always helps to pre-populate fields based on a customer’s previous shopping experience. Also remember to optimize individual pages before testing them against each other.
Others
- Test your Call to Action and experiment with the colours, placement and size of the
CTAs. - Test your copy.
- A/B test your forms and remember to keep them as lean as possible.
- Pre-populate your coupon codes to prevent your customer from straying away
from your site.
All that can be a little too overwhelming, but what if we told you one product can run all these tests and help you optimize your checkout pages methodically and produce results with great precision? Introducing Zarget! With Zarget’s easy to use A/B testing and Heat map software, your optimized checkout pages are just a click away. Using Zarget’s Simple self-service visual editor you can create variants of your checkout pages and optimize them without security threats and expending too much time and money!
These are a few basic things to check, however there are many several other factors that influence buyer’s decision making mindset, which we will discuss in detail in our upcoming blogs.
Start running your tests today with Zarget and create a kick-ass checkout page that will have your cash registers permanently ringing !
