You’re attracting plenty of visitors to your site and they’re spending time assessing your products and services. So far so good. Problems occur when they start the checkout process only to abandon their shopping cart midway through the process.
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Shopping cart abandonment is a big problem
According to a recent report by the ecommerce site Shopify, more than 65% of shopping carts are abandoned before the checkout process completes. That’s an awful lot of missed opportunities to make a sale, so it’s important to identify your own site’s dropout rates and do whatever you can to rectify them.
Sometimes the lack of completion is the result of a website crashing, or even the customer’s device running out of power, but far too often it’s the result of frustration or annoyance on the part of your customer. If that’s the case then it pays to identify the problem and do everything in your power to rectify the situation.
Keeping dropout rates to a minimum
Kissmetrics has produced an extremely useful blog post identifying a number of strategies for minimising customer dropout rates, including clear ‘checkout’ and ‘continue shopping’ buttons that can be quickly and easily identified.
Meanwhile webfuel ltd web designers in Nottingham has produced a helpful guide for those less technically inclined, detailing a number of important points to consider when setting up your checkout process. Although the company specialises in web design in Nottingham the team have many years of experience in designing ecommerce platforms for small to medium-sized businesses, so they know what works.
Advice includes keeping it simple, with minimal clicking. Customers want a speedy checkout process once they have made up their minds to make that all-important purchase, and if they have to battle their way through too many screens, clicking here and form-filling there, it can be all too easy to have a change of heart. Never allow your customers to become bored or irritated by your checkout process.
One particularly easy mistake to make is to hide delivery costs until the final page. If you charge extra for delivery then it’s always best to be upfront about this right from the beginning. Equally, don’t force your customers to set up an account. Allowing your visitors freedom of choice is an important point too often overlooked.