The most plaguing issue for an eCommerce site is cart abandonment. It is seen that the average value of carts abandoned during checkout is quite high which means that you are losing out on a size-able chunk of sale. This leads to a drop in conversion rate which is not a good sign for your site. It will also result in a drop in your SEO which is disastrous for any website. Hence, this is something you must avoid at all costs. Researches point out a few common mistakes made by e-commerce sites which are responsible for a bad checkout experience and therefore, a high cart abandonment rate. Here are some of the steps you can take to give your customers a better checkout experience, thereby ensuring a good conversion rate.
Offer guest checkout
Making it compulsory for your customers to sign up is redundant. People often have short attention span and may not want to waste time on signing up. Moreover, a lot of people find it tedious to open accounts and remember passwords hence they just abandon their cart when you ask them to sign up to continue. Always give your visitors an option to checkout without shopping. If you want to encourage your visitors to sign up for your website, you can offer them some discount on signing up but ensure that this option is never put on the checkout page. Apple has done a great job in increasing their sales by adding a guest checkout option.
Don’t add hidden fees
Mention all the additional costs like shipping, handling, taxes etc on the product page itself instead of putting them at the end during checkout. that way they can get an estimate of their expenses beforehand. Customers feel extremely annoyed and even betrayed when they see extra charges added up over their estimate during checkout and tend to abandon their carts. If possible integrate the taxes and other additional costs in the price of the product itself so that the customer doesn’t have to bother with additional costs.
Add progress indicator
Customers tend to get impatient in multi page checkouts. If your checkout is a process which involves several pages, make sure that you add a progress indicator for the customer to know how far the end is. The most popular way to do this is to add a progress bar on top to show how many steps are left. This acts as a motivation to continue, else your customer might get frustrated and quit midway.
Don’t redirect while checkout
Customers shopping online are usually extra wary because of all the scams floating around. They are insecure about sharing their details on an unknown website hence it is advisable to host your own checkout page. The moment your customer is redirected to a third party website, they will be wary of sharing their account and personal information and
Multiple payment options
Customer, especially the elderly ones or those who are new to online shopping, usually harbour a mistrust when it comes to sharing their account details online. There is a persistent fear of getting their bank accounts robbed by hackers. Moreover they are wary that their money might be stolen by the website itself. To ensure that you cater to a wider demographic, always add an option to pay on delivery. It is assuring to be able to pay once they get their product hence they don’t abandon their carts.
Better Forms
It is true that you need to know all the details of their shipping address to be able to send the package but if you make your forms, less complex and with auto fill option for future shopping sprees, customers will be encouraged to shop again and again. Even for first time customers, you can add some simplifying features like drop down menus for locations, or prediction based on pin code, this will make their work easier and give then a positive shopping experience.
You can easily reduce the rate of cart abandonment if you take the steps as mentioned. It is best that you hire a professional web designing company to design your e-commerce website for optimal results.