So you’re browsing a website, adding items to your digital cart, and you’re soon ready for checkout. But when you arrive at the checkout page, there’s so much more that needs to be done. For one, you have to enter your credit card information or your preferred method of payment again. The website did not remember or store your preferences at all. 

Adding salt to your wounds, the checkout page needs you to log in before making a purchase. And you cannot, for the life of you, remember your password. Going through the steps to retrieve that password could waste valuable time. Frustrated, you decide to either make the purchase another day or not make the purchase at all. 

Sound familiar? 

Now imagine your own customers going through this whole ordeal. An inefficient checkout process can either make or break the online shopping experience. In fact, according to a 2019 survey conducted by Retail Touchpoints, one of the biggest deal-breakers that causes customers to refrain from purchasing online is an unoptimized and complicated checkout process. 

There are several ways to help mitigate this process in order to improve the customer experience. 

For one, make sure that your website’s checkout process does not require a mandatory login. Instead, opt for a guest checkout option for customers who either want to save time or simply cannot remember their login credentials. Remember that these two reasons are not mutually exclusive, either. By not forcing your customers to remember their login information during the checkout process, you can save their time, too. 

Another way to optimize the checkout procedure and ensure the sale of your products is to retrieve your customers’ email addresses as soon as possible. By doing so, you can employ an email remarketing technique. This useful technique involves sending your customers an email reminding them of items left behind in the shopping cart. Your customers would likely remember to purchase the item and revisit your website when they get the notification.

The checkout process should also be efficient. A way to maximize that is to have a button for your customers to indicate that their shipping address is the same as their billing address. This ensures that customers don’t have to fill in everything all over again. Your customers would appreciate the time they save because of this. 

Having several payment options is another way to improve the customer experience. These options can come in the form of debit cards, credit cards, gift cards, or even online payment methods such as PayPal and cryptocurrency. These different payment methods allow flexibility and increase the overall efficiency of the checkout process. 

A progress bar to help customers keep track of the payment process is a useful tool as well. This ensures there are no surprises at each step of the transaction. It also helps break the process down into shorter sections and gives customers tasks that feel like small victories. This keeps them motivated to complete their purchase. 

To optimize your online checkout process, give the Find Your Audience team a call at 647-479-0688. You can also reach the team at hi@findyouraudience.online.