Many business leaders can feel frustrated because they have incredible online stores but still experience high rates of customer cart abandonment. Customers may have excellent, personalized shopping journeys through a website only to abandon their cart when they reach checkout. In the majority of cases, the website itself is not the problem; it’s the checkout experience.
However, there are several ways business leaders can improve their checkout processes to make it quick, seamless, and convenient for their customers. According to experts from Magento, Vertex, Loqate, Signifyd, Klarna, and Amazon Pay, changing a few key things about your own checkout can improve customer experience, increase revenue, and help you convert casual shoppers into loyal customers.
Capture and Verify Addresses
One issue that can significantly impact sales involves the process of verifying customers’ addresses. If a shopper makes just one typo when entering their home address, they may never receive their package. When this occurs, people will likely demand a refund and be reluctant to shop at the online store again. To combat confusion with verifying addresses, some companies have immediately sent emails to the customer during checkout so they can review their address and fix any mistakes. But even this strategy might contribute to shopper frustration by making the checkout take longer.
The best solution for accurately locating delivery points is an address verification service, or AVS. As a user is typing in their address, the service automatically generates address suggestions so they can simply click the correct one and complete the form within seconds.
Tyler Brock, VP of sales at an AVS company known as Loqate says, “Our address verification uses an algorithm to correlate entries with a database of global address data in real time to identify the correct address. This decreases failed deliveries, increases revenue per visitor, increases repeat purchases and reduces cart abandonment.”
Improve Data Security and Reduce Fraud
Detecting suspected cases of fraud can make any business leader uneasy, but wrongly accusing a customer of being fraudulent can potentially harm your business even more. If a shopper attempts to check out only to be told that their order will not be arriving, you have probably lost that customer for good. This is why careful, analytical fraud detection and security is necessary for any retailer’s checkout process.
One simple solution for businesses is Signifyd, a financial protection product, which prevents any mistakes from occurring when analyzing a suspicious purchase. It identifies fraud quickly, eliminates the need for manual review, and ensures that every real customer will receive their items.
Provide Accurate Information to Ensure Tax Compliance
With over 11,000 tax jurisdictions in the U.S., it can be very difficult to accurately calculate the exact cost of a customer’s purchase. Some retailers may try to provide a flat tax rate for shoppers, but if they happen to underestimate the cost, the business is unable to charge the customer for the full amount. In order to prevent tax estimation errors from eating into your profits, a solution like Vertex can be incredibly helpful. By confirming the customer’s address, Vertex is able to apply local tax rates and eliminate the need for retailers to keep up with any changing tax conditions.
Offer Flexible Payment Options
If your store doesn’t allow a variety of preferred payment options for customers, you could be missing out on a number of sales. Offering popular payment options for shoppers, such as Amazon Pay, can create a more streamlined checkout experience while eliminating some common pain points that people experience when buying online. Amazon Pay specifically addresses three main points to improve conversion rates:
- Eliminates the need for shoppers to create an account.
- Recognizes users sooner.
- Optimizes the shopping experience across all devices.
Accept Secure Payments for Online and Mobile Devices
One study showed that nearly 20% of users may abandon their cart at checkout because they don’t trust the website with their financial information. Offering the choice for customers to delay payment until their items have arrived, providing secure payment brands, and allowing instant financing for large purchases can prevent users from second-guessing their buying decisions. One instant financing solution, Klarna, lets customers apply for instant financing in just three simple steps, approving requests in less than 30 seconds from start to finish.
Build on a Scalable Cloud-Based eCommerce Platform
Akamai reports that every second of delay in page load time can cost you 7% in conversion. If you build your online store on a cloud-based eCommerce platform like Magento, you can ensure that your website and checkout process will both remain quick and seamless for customers, even on high-traffic days. In addition, Magento can provide you with:
- Cutting-edge innovative technologies produced by Magento experts.
- Thousands of integration options that can dramatically improve your store’s checkout, such as content delivery networks and image optimizations.
- Reducing overall IT time spent on maintaining the infrastructure of your website.
Consider utilizing these 6 expert tips today so you can reduce cart abandonment, improve user experience, maintain loyal customers, and increase your profits in no time!
