Did you know that 7 in 10 customers abandon their cart?(statista). The number one reason for cart abandonment is the additional charges levied during checkout. Streamlining your checkout processes and making sure that your checkout page provides as much information as it can,is a key factor to turning a potential customer into an actual customer. Especially with the holiday rush coming in, you need to optimize every single page.
Why Optimizing a Checkout Page is Important this Holiday Season?
The holiday season is when the cart abandonment rate is really high compared to the normal days. We have already established the fact that additional charges levied during payment is the number reason for this to happen.
Reasons to streamline your checkout page
- Reduce cart abandonment rate
- Increase transactions speed
- Provide personalization
- Offer convenience
- Minimizing errors
The holiday season is when you receive a lot of traffic. Imagine converting all abandoned cart with a streamlined checkout page and we’ll show you how.
Streamlining Your Checkout Page for success
1. Provide Multiple Payment Options
Add multiple payment options during the checkout. For example, Visa, MasterCard, AMX, PayPal are some of the popular payment options that merchants offer. But Buy now, Pay Later (BNPL) payment model is now becoming increasingly popular among the Gen Z and the Millennials. During the holidays is when customers tend to spend a lot even over their budget. But brands should understand this and facilitate customers into buying products using the Buy Now Pay Later platform.
2. Display Accurate Shipping info
Presenting the shipping information again would allow customers to once again go through all the information that they’ve entered to avoid any mistakes. Mentioning the estimated delivery date also sets the delivery expectations right. This also can lead to higher conversion rates since the customer knows that their package would arrive within the timeline that they want. Specifying the shipping cost or free shipping would also be very helpful to customers into deciding if they should buy from you. Offering shipping optionally also gives the customer the freedom to choose when they want their product to be delivered. Usually a customer who wants the order to arrive early, would probably pay more for shipping. Specifying those details would be convenient for decision making.
3. Add Gifting Options
Enable gifting options for your customers, this is a very big boon in disguise. This allows you to offer gifting options to save time for customers, but at the same time it offers you a unique opportunity to enforce your branding elements into the wrapping papers as well, once again opening a channel for communication with the customers.
4. Add a ‘Personalized Notes’ option
Personalization is key, but personalization can also be established on checkout pages by allowing the customers to add personalized moods for their loved ones. This provides a positive customer experience for the customer.
5. Collect necessary information for retargeting
Make sure that you get all the key data that you need during checkout, like the email addresses, first name, last name, and the shipping address, the billing address, and contact information. Save the information and allow the customers to autofill the next time, making the checkout experience even more convenients . This saves time for your customers. This information that you get, make sure that you can use it for promotional purposes. Of course, it’s not right to use a customer’s information without their permission, but with their permission, you can use their contact information to send them targeted personalized emails and SMSs.
6. Add Gift card option in your checkout page
Adding a gift card option leans more towards profiting the brand rather than the customer. It’s about selling gift cards and setting the stage for customer retention. Speaking from the customer’s side, gift cards are an easy way to purchase a certain value of credits from your store to give them to allowed ones. This is a free word-of-mouth promotion for your brand as well.
7. Display Shopping cart summary with discounts
Cart abandonment rates are really high, especially during the checkout phase, when customers see additional charges when they make the way to pay for the order. It’s imperative that you show the summary of your shopping cart along with the items that they’ve ordered with all the shipping charges and the taxes and any other extra charge that you’re going to levy on your customers. This sets the customer expectations right and avoids unnecessary cart abandonment. It also reduces the number of returns if you specify precisely the items that the customer has added in the cart.
Anatomy of a Checkout Page
A checkout page should contain the following
- Cart summary
- Addiptnap chagers levered
- Gift card options
- Gift wrapping options
- Refund and return policy link
- Total amount saved on coupons and discounts
- Shipping details – Estimated delivery date, shipping charges
- Multiple payment options
- Personalized recommendations
- Trust badges from various card providers
- Customer support information
- Shipping optionality
Final Word
Make sure that you streamline the checkout process and make it really convenient for your customers. Provide as many options that you can in that single page. Ensure that it is optimized to mobiles since most payments are made through mobiles. that they are compatible with wallet payment methods also. But remember that the customer journey does not end with the sale button. That’s when the post-purchase customer journey starts. Optimize your post-purchase customer journey for maximum impact on retention.
