When you’re running a business website, the checkout process is the real test of how much your customers are willing to trust and rely on your business. If you’re not able to convince them of your legitimacy or provide the assurances they need that their transactions are secure, then they’re a lot more likely to abandon the shopping cart than at any other point. As such, here, we’re going to look at the factors that need to be in place.
Speed
Delays hurt your business. This is perhaps most demonstrably true when it comes to your checkout process. Customers expect it ot move quickly without long loading times, unnecessary pages, or repeated processes. The more time it takes, the more time doubt has to creep in, and the more customers are likely to abandon their carts. Keep the process simple with easy layouts, as few steps as possible, and by allowing autofill.
Transparent Pricing
Customers don’t want surprises during checkout. As such, they expect product costs, taxes, delivery charges, discounts, and any additional fees to be clearly stated before they pay. Hidden costs are one of the fastest ways to lose trust and get them to give up on a purchase. Display shipping options and any other factors that are going to affect the price upfront, where possible, giving more transparency and allowing the customer to feel more in control of their costs.
Trusted Payment Methods
When it comes time to actually pay, customers want to be sure that they’re able to trust you with their financial information. Or, rather, they typically would prefer a recognisable and trusted API hosted payment integration to handle the transactions for them. These can offer fraud protection and data encryption that assures customers that their financial details aren’t going to end up in the hands of anyone they can’t trust, and are designed to handle transactions more smoothly, on top of that.
Predictable Navigation
Just as customers want their checkout process to be as efficient and speedy as possible, they also want a good idea of how many more steps it’s going to take. Breadcrumb navigation can help you break up the process into its chief steps, such as cart, shipping, payment, and confirmation, and shows customers which step of the journey they’re on at every point. When they’re able to see the progress they’re making towards the end, they’re more likely to stick it out.
Mobile Friendliness
More and more people are shopping directly from their phones, so you could be ignoring significant portions of your audience if you don’t cater to the mobile shopping experience. Provide checkout pages that work smoothly on smaller screens, with buttons, forms, and payment fields that can adapt to the change in space and layout. Loading speed is even more important on mobile, too, as poor connections can cause inefficient websites to become tortuously slow, so testing and optimising where possible is crucial.
If your checkout process doesn’t tick all of your customers’ boxes, then you need to go back to the drawing board. Otherwise, you can end up losing more sales than you make.