It’s an unfortunate fact of life in the world of eCommerce. People are abandoning their goods at the point of sale. Research shows that retailers are losing $18 billion annually due to shopping cart abandonment. Over two-thirds of people who add items to their online shopping cart leave without purchasing, and mobile rates are 70% lower than that for the desktop.
Haresh Kumar, VP of Marketing for Moovweb, and a team have incorporated the findings of leading research center on e-commerce usability, Baymard Institute, to categorize six types of best practices that you can apply to your mobile checkout and increase conversions up to 25%.
The 6 ways to improve the checkout experience were shared with MMW and they read as follows:
- Messaging: 92% of the largest U.S. e-commerce sites fail to have adequate messaging throughout checkout. Use clear, direct language and enhance form field labels with short descriptions. Avoid generic error messages such as “Invalid,” and explain why you require a phone number.
- Context: Brands must provide experiences that match the mobile users’ contexts with smaller touch-based screens and in-the-moment needs. Save users’ time and taps by auto-detecting card type based on their card number and city and state based on zip code. Disable auto-correct for name fields and provide numeric keyboards for phone and credit card information.
- Design and Navigation: 25% of shoppers abandon shopping carts because the website navigation is too complicated. 30% of users abandon their cards if they are asked to register up-front. Label each step in the checkout process so users can track where they are. Avoid using a coupon field as often times customers leave to find coupons and fail to return.
- Trust/Security: 17% of shoppers ditch their carts over concerns about payment security. Include credit card logos and site seals from anti-virus software brands. Add a padlock icon to reinforce users’ sense of security. Give customers a chance to review their order before they finalize.
- Funnel Insights & Analytics: Use field-level analytics to track which fields customers drop off. Analyze user behavior by segment and tailor the checkout experience to their needs. For example, if they came from an ad promoting a sale, fill in the promo code for them.
- Testing/Iteration: You should not call tests before you’ve reached a 95% confidence interval or higher. Run your tests for at least 1-2 business cycles. Determine the sample size in advance and run the experiment until the predetermined sample size has been reached. One useful tool for calculating sample size is www.testingsignificance.com
These six improvements will give companies big and small a clear roadmap to better checkouts.
