Don't leave me at the checkout!
What is happening across the industry?
As online sales continue to grow for businesses, the ability to acquire and convert web visitors into buyers is all the more vital. However, up to 68.8% of online shoppers abandon their cart, according to a study by the Baymard Institute. Ponder that for a minute, for every 10 people that put products into a cart, 7 won’t buy. And out of this, nearly a third don’t checkout because they find the checkout process too long. Whether you are in retail, fashion, travel or the restaurant business, this is cause for concern, but it doesn’t stop there.
74% of people in the UK access the internet via smartphones, and a third of online purchases are already happening via mobile. Ironically, in this mobile first era, businesses convert less customers on mobile than they do on desktops. Why? Well for starters, the average website takes 15 secs to load on mobile; while research by Google shows that slightly over half of web visitors will abandon a page that takes more than 3 secs to load. Why should businesses care? According to a study by Forrester Research, businesses are losing out on $18 billion worth of sales revenue every year due to abandoned carts. Additionally, for every 5 online shoppers that are dissatisfied on a visit, 4 are unlikely to buy again . For a growing business, this is like filling a broken hourglass where the sand never stops running.
What are the causes of slow checkout systems?
Unfriendly checkout page designs can slow down and distract users from the checkout process. Use of heavy, un-optimised images is a common culprit. A 2017 study by Google found 2 out of every 3 mobile pages to be over 1MB; some with images as big as 16MB. A balance between an attractive design and seamless functionality is vital for an effective checkout page. A maximum of 500KB is considered best practice. In other cases, online shoppers are forced to take more time than needed on checkout due to disorganised systems that don’t reveal details such as shipping costs, expected dates of delivery or possible discounts early enough. When users don’t find such info quick enough, they are encouraged to leave. Businesses are further slowing down the checkout systems by requiring customers to fill too many form fields. How do you define too many? According to a 2016 survey by the Baymard Institute, the average US checkout system has 15 form fields. Yet the study, surveying some of the top performing eCommerce companies found the ideal checkout form to have 7 fields. Meaning, businesses have more than half the number of necessary checkout form fields on their websites.
Improving checkout systems with PSPs
One way businesses can improve their checkout systems, without losing focus on the core product is through working with a Payment Service Provider (PSP). A PSP handles the collection, storage and transmission of payment details, connection to both local and international financial institutions, as well as the implementation of security measures on behalf of businesses.
3 ways to improve your checkout system
- Guest checkout
22% of cart abandoners do so after being required to create an account. Typically, an online shopper will register for an account once they have trusted a business enough and feel that there is value to be derived from making that commitment. An effective way to remove this barrier is to allow shoppers to check out as guests, and after they buy (have received value), ask them to register for an account. You can sweeten the deal by promising them a one-click checkout experience once they have registered. - One-click checkout
As the name suggests, with one-click checkout users can pay for products and services without inputting payment details afresh. This feature utilises tokenisation technology, which is used to convert shoppers’ credit and debit card information into random numbers (tokens) that can be safely stored for quick retrieval. These tokens can be stored in your PSP’s server so you don’t have to worry about maintaining security. Additionally, tokenisation ensures payment details are neither revealed to the merchant nor their PSP. - Mobile wallets
6% of cart abandoning online shoppers do so because they are denied a variety of payment options. In addition to accepting credit card payments, businesses should include mobile wallets that are popular among its user demographic. These include PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay etc.
Checkout systems are but a small part of the online customer’s purchasing journey, however, the impact of its failing are substantial. It affects brand perception both online and offline as well as revenue growth. Hence, businesses should keep track of user checkout behaviour to detect pain points early and fix them. The bare minimum for eCommerce now includes the ability to provide a wide variety of payment options (credit card acceptance and mobile wallets), quick one-click checkout, guest checkout, optimised web pages, PSD2 compliant security measures and features like ‘scan credit card to pay’. The rise of eCommerce has broken the location barrier of brick and mortar stores, but that has opened up online shoppers to a myriad of distractions. A quick and seamless checkout experience is the only way to keep short attention spans captured.
How Judopay can help
Judopay is a payments company born for the mobile age. Its unified API helps businesses accept payments on any device with all popular payment methods and grow faster with a seamless checkout system. Through a single integration, Judopay helps businesses accept and process credit cards, as well as mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, and Google Pay. Plus, get tools to help prevent fraudulent transactions, manage data security, and increase revenue. For a fast loading checkout page businesses can get a ready made, drop-in user interface.
