Your brand can cost a purchase if your website is providing a poor checkout experience to customers. Keeping each step of checkout as simple as possible is the best way to avoid this so that customers have no scope to hesitate.
In this blog, you’ll learn about the ecommerce checkout process flow, along with best practices for eCommerce checkout.
What is Checkout Process in eCommerce?
An eCommerce checkout process is the sequence of steps that a customer takes to complete a purchase on your website.
These steps include the checkout process the customer goes through, such as viewing product details, adding the product to their cart, reviewing the list of products added to the cart, adding shipping details, and finally making the payment to complete the transaction.
This process can be optimized using e-commerce checkout best practices to make it as easy and seamless as possible for customers.
What Does Abandon Checkout Mean?
Checkout abandon means customers leave checkout after initiating the checkout process.
The average checkout abandonment rate is calculated by dividing the total number of completed transactions by the number of initiated checkouts that are abandoned, subtracting this value from 1, and multiplying by 100.
Reasons for Customers to Abandon the Checkout
It’s crazy , but true, that 1 in every 5 online shoppers will abandon their cart because of the below reasons:
- The lengthy or complicated checkout process
- High additional charges at checkout
- Sign up/create an account to complete the checkout
- Do not trust security to protect transactions and personal details
- Slow delivery or inadequate shipping options.
You can try some eCommerce checkout process best practices to reduce this abandonment and increase your store sales.
Also Read:- Ways To Reduce The Shopping Cart Abandonment In Magento 2 Store
The eCommerce Checkout Process Flow
The eCommerce store's checkout process includes the following steps:
- Product Page: Custom view the product details on the product page along with all the necessary information including price, colour, product specifications, etc.
- Add To Cart: There is an option “Add to Cart” on the product page and when a customer adds a product to their cart, they should be taken to a shopping cart page that shows all the products they’ve added, as well as the total cost including shipping and tax.
- Review page: A review page is where customers can review the products they’ve selected to order.
- Shipping & Billing Information: Customers add the shipping and billing details during checkout and after adding their shipping information, the website displays all the shipping options they have along with the shipping costs and timeframes for the products they’ve added.
- Payment Method: Next step in the checkout process is payment info. Provide a list of popular payment methods that customers can easily select from and make the checkout process easier. Also, make sure that your checkout button is clearly defined so that customers can quickly complete the payment process.
- Order Confirmation: The last step. It includes all the details about the customer’s order along with order ID, product details, the amount they paid, delivery details, etc.
Now let’s dive into the eCommerce checkout flow best practices which will not only optimize the checkout process of your Magento 2 store but also helps in increasing sales and improving user experience.
20 Best Ecommerce Checkout Page Best Practices You Should Consider
Here are some useful best practices to improve your eCommerce checkout flow
1. Keep It Short and Simple
Without saying, keep your checkout flow as simple as possible. Remove the header and footer on the checkout page. Simplify your checkout forms and ask only for the necessary information needed for the transaction.
Also, don’t make them provide the same details again and again. For example, if their billing and shipping addresses are the same, so by default it will be displayed in both fields automatically. If in case the user needs to change their address, they can add another one by clicking a button.
2. One-Page Checkout
One-page checkout ensures that customers can quickly order as all the steps are displayed on a single page, requiring minimum navigation, and the chances of cart abandonment can be reduced radically.
Compared to the default multipage checkout, one-page checkout is more user-friendly. It also helps users fill out the information in one go, which is easier to navigate and complete the purchase without a hitch.
3. Implement Progress Bar
As per the above tactic, all the checkout details will be packed on a single page, it may seem lengthy. And such uncertainty scares brains. If a customer does not understand how long it will take them to complete the checkout process, they may abandon the checkout in between.
To tackle this, you can add a progress indicator in the one-page checkout, where they are now and how many steps are left to complete, and mark mini-milestones that the user has achieved.
4. Multiple Payment Option
It is essential to support multiple payment gateways and payment options for your customers to ensure a seamless and localized payment experience for them. With modern e-commerce, things have changed. Along with Visa and Mastercard, customers like to know what other payment options are available.
Is PayPal available? Apple Pay? Bitpay? Online wallets? etc. In other words, what payment options are available , so they can choose what is best for them. You can display the payment methods’ logo directly on the shopping cart for them.
This will be a kind of additional bonus to your store because most payment methods are seen as trustworthy and highly secure.
5. Mobile Optimization
Nowadays, the amount of patrons browsing eCommerce websites for online shopping and making online payments from their mobile phones has skyrocketed. So, it is the responsibility of the store owner to focus on mobile-friendly UX and designs that are uniform to all devices.
6. Ensure Security and Highlight Trust Signals
The most important aspects of online shopping are security and privacy concerns. Customers pay a lot of attention to how secure the website is and do their transactions are safe or not.
Displaying trust signals and security certifications at checkout build confidence in the customer. Comply with security guidelines and standards like PCI, SSL, GDPR, CCPA, and MFA standards. Also, using “https” in the website URL bar will signal that the website is secure.
7. Guest Checkout Option
The faster checkout experience is the main benefit of guest checkout. Customers are always looking for quick purchases without any lengthy process like signing up/creating an account before checkout.
Creating an account or signing up before checkout becomes a point of friction and leads to abandoned checkout. So better to provide a guest checkout option for users to enter the minimum required details quickly, head straight to process the payment, and finish the purchase before they change their minds.
Ecommerce store owners can try Magento 2 guest to customer extension for allowing customer’s to checkout as a guest user.
8. Enable Social Login
To optimize the e-commerce checkout process, you can add social login options so that the users can log in to the website with their social media accounts. This feature of social media login works as a boon for the people, who are abd at remembering their passwords.
Not only this, it helps to build trust in the brand too since the customers think that they are not forced by the brand to create an account for checkout.
9. Spend in a Better Magento Hosting Plan
Customers are probably going to abandon their checkout in between if it takes a long time to get to the checkout page due to slow hosting.
You need to make sure that customers don’t spend a lot of time moving between pages, completing the checkout, or waiting for so long for a website to load. Better, you should invest in a better website hosting plan for your Magento store to optimize the checkout process easier and get faster speeds.
10. Avoid Extra Cost
Remove additional costs, as they are the prime reason customers abandon checkout at the very last second. They want to know exactly how much they have to pay for their orders because they count on a certain amount of money.
When they find out about such surprise costs, in the end, they feel deceived. So try to list any additional costs at the beginning including subtotal, applicable tax, shipping fees, total pay, etc.
11. Add CTA
CTAs (Call to Action) are mandatory on checkout to indicate users of which steps they should take next to complete the purchase. Use proper descriptions such as "Proceed to Checkout” , “Continue Shopping” , “Apply Coupon”, and/or “Complete Order” .
12. Live Chat
Offering real-time support to customers to answer their questions or doubts during the cart checkout. Add a live chat option on the checkout page so that the customer can get answers without leaving the checkout in between.
If you fail to provide them with the necessary details on time, you risk losing the customers.
13. Provide a Summary of Cart Contents
Displaying the overall order summary and the total costs including delivery and any extras provides a useful reminder for customers.
It helps shoppers to view that their order is correct before they complete the checkout, and also means they don’t have to go back to check anything by leaving the checkout process in between.
14. Reduce Alternative Navigation at Checkout
One of the most effective e-commerce checkout page best practices is to reduce the alternative navigation once you have created a great checkout flow.
If you are to navigate a customer to another page or somewhere else during their checkout, they could end up feeling trapped or lost and will simply leave altogether if they can’t easily return to the store. Thus, it’s very important to keep things as simple as possible and follow a uniform and consistent flow.
15. Keep the Back Button Fully Functional
Sometimes people hit the back button to undo any action they’ve taken unintentionally on a website.
But if by clicking the back button, all the actions get erased suddenly, they’re going to be frustrated with the process and might abandon the checkout process.
So make sure your back button should fully functional and keep everything saved rather than deleting everything.
16. Use Visuals to Make the Process Easier
Visuals are processed quickly, so it conveys the information more faster and efficiently compared to text.
A visual connection helps to establish credibility among customers if they find that the checkout pages look like the rest of the website.
It builds trust, and it feels safe that the checkout page belongs to the website.
17. Use form validation and error notifications
To get more accurate customer details and to reduce errors during checkout, you can add data validation and error notifications to the checkout process. This feature notifies them that something is missing or invalid and also ensures that they enter accurate data so that you have validated details.
18. Consistently Remind your Value to Customers
Highlight the benefits you provide to customers like easy returns, free shipping, and your concern for their security while shopping.
19. Autofill Information
Shorten the checkout process by offering the feature of automatic data filling. Autofill details will eliminate the need for repetitive actions and increase the chances that a person will make a purchase.
20. Incentivize the Customer Purchase
Show coupon codes, complementary products, and other discount details on the shopping cart review pages, but not anywhere else.
Conclusion: Make Your Site’s Checkout Process Easy with Best eCommerce Checkout Practices
Conversion rate, Checkout process, and website optimization are ongoing processes. Develop ideas, make a change, and try out different tactics to see how it affects conversion rates and sales.
You can also hire Magento 2 developers , for improving your website's checkout page.
Try the above e-commerce checkout best practices on your Magento 2 store and track your sales growth.
After trial and test, you’ll discover that optimization can not only be helpful – it can pay off a big return on investment.
