Dropping conversion rates and increasing cart abandonment are the most bitter facts to digest for every e-commerce owner.

Checkout page is where the e-commerce owners actually get their revenue from, and losing even a 1% in checkout processes means a lot for an e-commerce business. While there are a lot of things you can do to try to increase the conversion rate, checkout page design is indeed very crucial to tackle the declining conversion rates.

Many researches cite that the average cart abandonment rate is about 70% which has a drastic impact on the revenues of ecommerce businesses around the world. If ecommerce website owners optimize their websites’ checkout pages, they can recover billions that are lost because of cart abandonment. Here in this post, we will discuss some useful checkout page design strategies that help you optimize your checkout page and improve the conversion rates.

Simple and clean design

A first step you need to take before you go further is to make your checkout page layout simple and clean. The lesser the clicks users face on your checkout page the higher the conversion you are likely to earn. In short, the checkout page shouldn’t be overwhelmed with a lot of options and fields, it should be simple and clean. You can also add a visual indicator to let the shoppers know how far they have progressed if you have things spread out on multiple pages. You can also choose to hire the best web design and development company to build a majestic checkout page, if needed.

Things you can do for this:

1. Your shoppers shouldn’t wait a lot to find the checkout buttons. The lesser the time they spend finding the checkout buttons the sooner they will take intended actions. For this, you should add checkout buttons on both top and bottom of the checkout page.
2. Add trust seals and signals to the page. Many customers abandon purchases because they don’t trust the website they are doing business with. You can build confidence among people by adding credit card logos, trust seals like Verisign and other trust signals like security, payment and SSL badges.
3. Provide a continue shopping button on the checkout page which is useful in case when a shopper has forgotten something. Clicking back button to include something that the shopper has forgotten could be a bad idea as it resets the cart which means the shopper may have to start from the beginning to checkout. Plus, you should also use different colors for checkout buttons and continue shopping options. By adding different colors along with adequate space, you can make both these options visually separable to reduce chances of clicking the wrong option.
4. Presenting people with a register pop-up during the checkout process is very annoying and distracting. You can provide the registration pop-up after the checkout as people will like to give their contact details to track their orders after completing order. Also, It allows the shopper to save their carts and provide options to add products to wishlist that they can use for the future purchases.
5. You should also provide links to FAQs, privacy policy, returns policy, shipping details, etc in the reach of shoppers on the checkout page. These options allow the customers to find out answers to their questions that might arise in their mind before finalizing the purchase.

Simplify Shipping and payment

Many shoppers abandon their shopping cart when it comes to shipping and payment processes. There are many reasons for this such as the shipping charges, taxes, and other surprise costs that increase the cost of order. You need to optimize the page to tackle the cart abandoners. It provides free shipping, also include discounts and offers to always reflect the final price to the shoppers. When free shipping isn’t available, then clearly mention the items that will cost when people buy them.

Things you can do for this:

1. You can consider providing free shipping if it is affordable to you. It is a great trigger to compel many shoppers to make purchases. You can also provide free shipping when customers spend certain money on shopping. With this option, you can set a free shipping threshold and when customers reach that threshold they can become eligible for free shipping. It also encourages the shoppers to buy products in large volumes so that they can avail free shipping. To make it more visually appealing, you can also add a progress bar in the cart to enable the shoppers to track how close they are to avail the free shipping benefit.
2. You can make checkout more effective by adding multiple payment and shipping options. It allows the shoppers to specify their preferences for receiving the orders. They should be able to choose how quickly they want their orders to be delivered. Similarly, they should also be able to opt for a payment option of their choice. Integrate multiple payment options like payments from credit/debit cards, net banking, online payment services (PayPal, Google Pay, etc).
3. Add the latest promo code along with discounts automatically to the checkout page. It would be distracting to allow the shoppers to return to the previous page to copy and paste the promo codes.
4. Shoppers would enjoy getting a good deal which you can provide by presenting both previous price and a price after applying discounts and coupons. Show how much savings they have made as it will boost their shopping morale.
5. Showing the approximate shipping time is also useful which can be displayed based on the zip code and shipping methods chosen by the shoppers. It provides an idea to the shopper about when they can expect their orders to be arrived. If you need some information about the shopper like date of birth, phone number, etc, then provide a reason why you need such information. By giving reasons for collection of such information, you can build trust among shoppers and make them take the desired action.

Optimize the product details

When the design and layout of your checkout page is up to the mark, then you need to make sure that the products details are also in check with proper information and appearance. The product details enable shoppers to take a view of their orders and ensure that they have ordered the right combination of colors, sizes, quantity, etc of the items. It should include all relevant information that provides the shoppers with a quick overview of their orders. If you have doubts or want consultation, you can seek a web developer to design and develop a checkout page by including the right ingredients.

Things you can do for this:

1. Adding just numbers and names for products is not enough for the shoppers to provide a product summary for them. It provides different color, size and other customization options that are available for products to help the shopper ensure that they have picked the right products that fulfil their needs.
2. It allows the shoppers to change their orders from the checkout page like letting them to add or remove quantity of items. By providing such options, you can avoid making shoppers go back and modify the order which oftentimes result in cart abandonment. Try to make checkout process as easy as possible.
3. Recommendation for related products before checkout can be useful especially in case of electronic products. The shoppers may have other requirements that the product they are trying to buy doesn’t fulfil completely. With recommendations, they can buy other items that they need with their main product and ensure that their order is complete as per their expectations. For example, a shopper may want an adapter with an item which is not available with the item itself, through recommendation, the shopper can buy the adapter when buying the main item.
4. Display whether a product is in stock or out of stock. By using the best inventory tracking into your cart, you can ensure that your customers will be able to find out whether a specific product is available or not. When a product is out of stock, then you can also allow your customers to receive notifications when that product is again in stock.
5. Include ratings and testimonials for products to let them decide which products to buy. They are useful for instilling confidence in customers. Where possible, you can also add product videos. Also, if you accept pre-orders for some products, you should provide details on the availability of those products. Provide an expected time to shoppers about when the products will be available.

Provide offers and rewards

Every customer likes to have some rewards and offers in exchange for some purchases. You can also remarket those customers who abandoned their carts by using offers and rewards. By sending emails with proper offers and deals, you can ensure that customers come back to your online shop and complete their orders. You can provide different rewards like shopping coupons, discount coupons, redeemable rewarding points, etc to earn loyalty of customers.

Things you can do for this:

1. Encourage your shoppers to give reviews in exchange of offers and rewards. Providing rewards, offers and discounts enable you to cater a large number of customers as more and more shoppers will be interested in obtaining the best purchase deals. Plus, product reviews will help customers in making purchase decisions.
2. You can consider running a loyalty program by awarding points to customers who buy certain amount of products or reach a certain purchase threshold. Your customers will be able to redeem the rewards and obtain gifts or other items.
3. Live chat can be useful to enable customers to get answers to their questions very quickly. Often customers have many questions in their minds about the products before they checkout. A chat option will enable those customers to find answers to their questions and when satisfied they can head to checkout process.
4. You should also include your customer support service number to make sure that the customers who are not comfortable with online chat option can contact you to resolve their queries. If possible, you can also offer guest checkouts which enable the customers to order products without need to create an account for an online shop. Although creation of an account by customers is important for you to establish the future marketing relationships, providing guest out can be useful as customers will create an account with you for reasons like tracking orders and more.
5. Retarget those customers who have abandoned the cart with advertising and email. You can bring back the customers who abandoned the cart by sending personalize emails and showing personalized ads. With these strategies, you can try to increase your conversion rate.

Wrapping up!

Every ecommerce business tries different ways to resolve the problem of abandoned carts and improve their conversion rates. There are several factors that might affect the conversion rate of an ecommerce website and checkout process is the most part among them. If checkout process is not up to the mark, it will lead into more abandoned carts. In order to give a push to your conversion rate, you need to start with optimizing your checkout page.

You need to choose the right web development company to build the right checkout page. Don’t let the customers drop their shopping cart due to bad checkout experience, make sure that they complete their order flawlessly without any hassles. The strategies we have discussed above can be very useful to make your checkout page more effective and user-friendly which in turn helps you boost your conversion rate. With the right ingredients present on your checkout page, you can earn the trust of your customers and encourage them to take the right action.