Online stores must maintain one basic approach – easy navigation and checkout for customers. That’s a sure formula for increasing sales and reducing abandoned carts. Once a customer has made a choice of product he can hardly wait to finish the purchase by making a payment. This is where online stores can capitalize and increase their sales! The key is to have a very convenient checkout process.
Imagine the frustration that mounts with every lengthy form that a customer is required to fill to finish a simple payment for your product! Tolerance levels for online customers are very small. More the number of steps and clicks, the more are your chances of ending up with an abandoned cart! So, it’s vital for all online store owners to optimize the checkout process.
Here are a few pointers that will help you optimize the checkout process for your online store:
Account creation should not be mandatory
That’s right – do not force the registration process. Forcing a user to create an account, registering and then proceeding towards purchase is a complete hindrance in the checkout process. This is one of the strongest reasons for abandoned carts. On the other hand, if you keep the process simple, quick and easy, you can gather all necessary customer data as well as make that sale!
Checkout area should be clutter free
Keep your checkout area clutter free and intuitive enough to lead the customer towards the next step in the process. Avoid unnecessary distractions and you’ve got your sale! Lead the customer to the order confirmation and payment pages with an easily navigable page design.
Short Check out process
Work out what minimum information you require from the customer. Add only those fields to the checkout process. This will make the checkout process short and sweet. Also, let the customers know the number of steps in advances and let them know at which stage they are. This will help them understand the process and know what to expect.
Form Filling should be easy
No complicated form filling process. This leads to definite loss of customers. Make your form simple and easy to understand. Mark important and mandatory fields with an asterisk. Create drop downs so customers can easily select from options instead of typing. Use radio buttons if necessary for definite answers.
Security for user’s data
Your online store would be requesting credit card details and other banking details for customers. This means that you need to ensure that your check out process is highly secure. Show your customers that their details are safe while shopping on your site.
Use an extension like one step check out if necessary
Magento has quite a few quality extensions that can help you ease your checkout process. The one step checkout extension is one such extension which can be easily downloaded and integrated into your existing Magento ecommerce store. It reduces the standard six steps of the Magento checkout process to just one step, that too without having to refresh the page.
Reduce your abandoned carts and gain more profits with these simple optimization steps for your checkout process.
