Being an e-commerce store owner is not only an exciting phase but a dream for many. Since your e-commerce store can reach the masses, your sales are bound to increase, provided your store products are in demand and the prices are enticing.
But, there is one more factor that can impact your sales volumes. It’s the checkout page.
Are you aware that there can be a major slowdown in sales if your checkout process is complex?
Visitors abandon their shopping carts and move to other competitive sites when they are dissatisfied with the checkout process.
Research from Baymard Institute indicates that the shopping cart abandonment rate stands at 69.99%.
Unbelievable, but it’s true. Visitors place many items in the cart but don’t purchase them. This is lost sales which can be recovered by optimizing your checkout process.
In this blog, we will discuss Shopify Checkout Optimization and its tips to recover lost sales.
- What is Checkout Process Optimization?
The checkout process optimization involves varied steps taken by a customer to complete their online purchase. and price intelligence helps retailers make informed pricing decisions throughout this process. Each Shopify retailer works on improving the conversion rates of their store by simplifying this process.
Shopify checkout optimization is the strategy implemented by these retailers wherein customers are guided and driven to complete the purchase of their desired product without any distractions. This optimization is also vital to improve the sales ratio, so without further ado, let’s find out checkout process optimization matters.
- Why does Checkout Process Optimisation Matter?
Each e-commerce platform has a default checkout process, which may or may not be customer-friendly. E-commerce store owners must optimize their checkout process to give their customers a better shopping experience in their store.
Shopify retailers always ensure that their checkout process is optimized to strengthen customer trust and motivate them to take a purchase decision. In this way, they ensure that their customers don’t abandon their carts.
Shopify checkout optimization is done with the motto to increase the purchase count by using varied techniques, thus motivating customers to spend more time on the site. This indirectly helps in enhancing store sales and revenues.
Let’s find out the varied techniques used in the Shopify checkout optimization process and their tips to recover lost sales.
- Checkout Process Optimisation Tips to Recover Lost Sales:
- Permit Guest Checkout:
E-commerce stores love to collect customer information by asking customers to fill up forms during their store visits. This takes time, as is distressing to many.
Though these details may lead to a quick checkout process in the future, compelling first-time customers to create accounts may instantly increase your cart abandonment rate.
With such a competitive e-commerce market, it’s essential that each visitor stays and purchases from your site.
Shopify checkout optimization uses Guest/Social checkout, which permits these shoppers to shop from their store without filling in lengthy details. This gives them a hassle-free experience and they approach the store with a positive mind.
- Offers Free Shipping:
48% of the customers abandon carts due to extra hidden charges. This includes the shipping costs too.
Free shipping appeals to customers since it simplifies the pricing structure. Customers are assured that there are no hidden charges and hence e-commerce stores use this marketing trick to gain more customers.
Shopify checkout optimization ensures that the shipping charges are zeroed with a condition for customers to place a minimum amount of purchase. This condition not only helps uplift sales and revenues but also enhances customer satisfaction.
- Offering Multiple Payment Options:
Although having fewer payment options have a small (9% as shown in the above graph) impact on sales, it can be addressed easily to gain better customer volumes.
Customers demand multiple payment options and if they don’t find the same, they easily switch over to your competitors.
The Shopify motto stands for offering maximum payment options to customers to see their smiling faces during the shopping process.
The Shopify checkout optimization is a perfect example of how they fulfill their motto to keep their customers satisfied by offering varied payment options like PayPal, credit/debit cards, digital wallets (Apple Pay, Google Pay), etc.
- Using Google Auto-Address:
Type a few alphabets and the rest is completed by Google.
One of the best features of Google is its Autocomplete feature which fills the customer's billing/shipping address by automatically filling it, thus reducing customer efforts to type the same.
Enable this feature on the online store so that it can instantly pop up the details of address, city, state, ZIP code, etc.
The best part of this feature is that it's 20% times quicker than the manual filling method.
Shopify checkout optimization uses the auto-address option to help their customers make a quick purchase.
- Use a Single-click Checkout:
A single-page and a single-click checkout process works wonders for increasing the sales count since customers have less time to think about their purchase decision. It not only makes the checkout process easy, but it also helps in converting online visitors to online customers since they can easily shop for their desirables without going through long processes.
Shopify checkout optimization works on creating a quick checkout page with minimal details required to the filled in by the customer. This quickens the conversion of the browsing process into the buying process and is ideal for impulsive purchases.
Example: Shopify’s Shop Pay allows 100 million shoppers a single-click checkout, even when they are first-timers.
- Display Security Icons & Trust Badges:
Security is one of the most vital factors of online shopping. Customers are afraid to transact online since hackers are on the prowl to invade their privacy.
88% of customers won’t use a brand they don’t trust – Techwire Asia
To enhance customer trust in your brand and product, it's essential to install an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificate.
SSL digital certificates secure your entire web with encryption. This encryption converts the plain and readable text into a cipher and non-readable format. These algorithms secure client-server communications and keep customer data safe.
Shopify checkout optimization is secured by SSL certificate. It helps secure customer data with robust 256-bit encryption. It also displays trust icons like a tiny padlock in the URL.
Apart from SSL security icons, anti-virus software logos, payment badges, trust badges, positive customer reviews, money-back offers, etc. are also used on the checkout page to increase customer trust.
- Use Powerful Editor & Templates:
Your site should look professional both in language as well as in design. The use of powerful editing tools and templates can help in the quick generation of professional and eye-catching store pages.
Example: Shopify checkout optimization uses GemPages which offers various options of which some are free and some chargeable. Options offered by GemPages include product pages, blog posts, pop-up elements, A/B testing, live chat, and speed optimizations.
GemPages also offers a template library and a strong editor. All of these options help in creating stunning store pages. The use of good animation, the latest themes, and captivating designs are other positive additions done in the Shopify checkout optimization for gaining customers’ attention.
GemPages also helps in the quick loading of high-converting landing pages which helps in optimizing the sales funnel and in raising the sales graph.
- Incorporate a Mobile-friendly Design:
60% of the Web Traffic comes from Mobile Phones
If your store or your checkout process is not mobile-friendly, you are losing out on a huge chunk of customers.
Your site as well as your checkout page should be optimized for mobile to gather more network traffic.
Shopify checkout optimization has a mobile-friendly checkout page which is made by minimizing the codes, compressing images, using responsive designs and templates, avoiding flash, eliminating pop-ups, and using distinctive buttons for “Add to Cart”, “Proceed to Checkout” and “Buy Now”.
- Reduce Form Fields:
Many stores have double the form fields than needed. This can frustrate your visitors.
Reducing the number of form fields on the checkout page can help optimize the checkout process and improve sales by making it quicker and easier for customers to complete their purchases. This may also help convert visitors to customers.
Tips:
- Only ask for essential details
- Make use of auto-fill options
- Make use of smart defaults (filling in address, other contact details, etc.)
- Combine form fields (use a single field for the entire customer’s name)
Shopify checkout optimization is a perfect example of how customer details are acquired with minimum fields.
- Offer Live Chat Option:
Since the purchase of the product is online, many shoppers have queries regarding the product quality, usage, money-back options, or warranties.
Shopify checkout optimization ensures that all these customer queries are resolved by offering live chat options. The same is incorporated in the checkout page along with money-back information, return policy, etc.
This move eases the load on the customer support team and since the response is instant, and hence shoppers can instantly take their purchase decision.
- Offer Cross-sell & Upsell:
Cross-selling and Upselling are some other factors that can help in increasing store revenues.
Upselling is to increase the customer’s value by motivating them to buy a more expensive product than the one chosen. Cross-selling on the other hand is to motivate the customer to buy an additional product along with the main one.
Both these techniques help in increasing revenues and hence the Shopify platform has incorporated them in the pre-checkout phase.
- Optimize the Checkout Loading Speed:
Use Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool by entering your URL to measure the site speed and checkout load time.
Page load speed is not only beneficial for your e-commerce store but also for SEO (search engine optimization). This is the key to gaining better conversions and Shopify checkout optimization ensures that their users get a good user experience since their site speed is optimized by following the below stated tips.
Tips:
- Optimizing Images
- Minimizing the use of Java & CSS
- Using CDN (content delivery network)
- Enabling grip compression
- Utilizing Caching
- Enable Checkout Abandonment Emails:
As stated above, the cart abandonment ratio is high and many users tend to leave their shopping carts, before finishing the checkout process. The best way to get them back on your site is to reach out to them by sending checkout abandonment emails.
So, if a customer leaves your site before the checkout process they will get an automated email motivating them to finish their purchase.
Shopify checkout optimization has enabled email notifications by:
- Going to your store admin > Settings > Checkout
- Go to the Abandoned checkouts section > tick the option “Automatically send abandoned checkout emails” and later click Save.
Being an e-commerce store owner, you can also recover your lost sales by reminding these customers about the items they left in their carts.
This will motivate them to complete their purchases and enhance the revenues of your e-commerce store.
- Display Return/Refund Details on the Checkout Page:
In physical sales, customers can view and feel the products in front of them. But in online sales, products can only be viewed since they exist only in pictures.
Many times, customers doing online shopping have doubts about the product functionalities, their quality, etc. since they miss the feel of the same.
What if I don’t like the product?
This is a common question for many customers doing online shopping. Display of return and refund details on the checkout page helps in enhancing customers’ confidence in the product and makes their shopping experience more enjoyable and trustworthy.
Shopify checkout optimization has added returns/refund details on their checkout page for giving their customers a trustworthy and enjoyable shopping experience.
- Bolster Sales with Physiological Triggers:
Physiological triggers the emotions and the mental behaviors of potential clients and encourage them to complete the purchase process.
Tips to Bolster Sales using these Triggers:
- Generate a sense of shortage – “Grab this before the stock is over”
- Urgency – “Order in 24 hours to gain a 20% discount”
- Social Evidence – “25 people bought it in the past hour”
- Countdown Timers – “Grab a product and avail of the discount offer” before the discount is over”
- Freebies – “Buy 1 Get 1 Free”
Shopify checkout optimization uses these physiological triggers to reinforce sales of their e-commerce store.
Wrapping Up:
Lastly, the checkout process must be tested to garner more network traffic. Research your page using the A/B testing method to know which factors impact your store in a major way. Keep an eye on the cart abandonment rates as well as the conversion rates.
Above-stated is some of the key factors which are implemented in the Shopify checkout optimization page for gaining customers.
In a nutshell, the implementation of a streamlined and simple checkout process, use of clear language, multiple payment options, display of trust seals and security badges, and use of exit-intent technology for viewing discounts/offers for customers who are abandoning the site without finishing the checkout process, etc. are needed for giving the customers a positive and happy checkout experience.