A Complete Guide On How Build A Seamless Checkout Process 

Checkout stage drop off is real! Many studies across years have shown that online businesses witness as much as 60-80% of drop off at the checkout stage due to myriad reasons. Some of the most common ones being, “checkout was too long,” “high additional cost,” “forced account creation,” “hidden cost,” etc. With online competition becoming fierce everyday, it’s becoming extremely imperative for online retailers to make the journey from ‘Add to Cart’ to ‘Place Order” as smooth as possible for customers. But how do you ensure seamless checkout?

In this post, we’re going to cut to the chase and share some smart ways to optimse your checkout funnel and ensure minimal drop offs with high conversion rate. 

8 Ways To Build A Seamless Checkout Process For Your Online Store  

While we do agree that your checkout process should be designed based on the information you absolutely need from buyers, here are a few best practices to ensure it also meets their expectations and preferences: 

1. Clean Design With No Distractions 

If a shopper has reached the checkout page, it means you have done a lot of things right. And now, at this point, you should make it even simpler and easier for them to checkout. Meaning, remove all the distractions.

Clutter-free pages have more benefits on customer psychology and behavior than you could imagine.

Here are some advantages of clean design.

• You can drive customers to take your desired actions
• The page loads faster because there are lesser elements
• You can avoid making the page look salesy
• Simple designs are timeless and don’t feel outdated
• It is easier to use and hence improves conversion rate

How to ensure a clean checkout design?

• Remove extra elements such as menu, product recommendations, etc.
• Have minimal elements on the page to ensure visual clarity
• Have a clear call to action (CTA) button to drive customers towards converting
• Provide a progress bar so customers know how close they are to completing the purchase
• Ensure the page loads fast 
• Add a progress bar to set expectations 

2. Ensure Mobile Friendliness

Smartphones now account for 87% of online sales. While mobile shopping is on the rise, eCommerce retailers still struggle to provide the best user experience and seamless checkout on smaller screens. 

Here’s how to ensure your online store is mobile-friendly: 

• Keep only relevant information, remove unnecessary content
• Have an appropriate size and resolution for images to fit the mobile screen
• Remove popups and sidebars as they distract and are difficult to close on small screens
• Place forms and CTAs in spaces that are easier to click and reach with the thumb
• Display mobile-first payment modes such as UPI payments, wallets, etc.
• Make mobile-friendly payment methods as the preferred modes to make checkout faster 
• Provide autofill for address as filling forms on small mobile screens is difficult and time-consuming

3. Offer Auto-fills On Checkout Fields 

Most eCommerce retailers focus on the bigger aspects of the website—the landing page, product pages, images, product information, etc. In the process, forget about the details.

For example, the auto-fills and forms in the checkout field. It may seem like a small aspect of your customers’ purchase journey, but take a deeper look at it, and you’d be surprised—it’s one of the biggest pain points of customers. And it can make or break your sales.

Having to manually fill details can annoy customers as it is a repetitive task, tedious, and time consuming. The solution: auto-fill these mundane forms.

Benefits of auto-fill on the checkout page are,

• It makes the checkout process faster and easier, and saves time
• It increases conversions and revenue generation
• It gives a professional outlook and builds reliability and trust
• It Boosts customer satisfaction
• Auto-fill is a form of personalized experience for customers
• It ensures the correct addresses and eliminates errors, saving time and energy

GoKwik, a leading eCommerce enablement company helps eCommerce brands extend this service to their customers. Owing to its vast network of data, any customer shopping on its partner merchant’s website such as boAt, Noise, Foxtale, Swiss Beauty, Urban Gabru, etc., will see their address get auto-filled. This allows them to skip the tedious task of filling details and experience a seamless checkout process.

4. Allow Guest Checkout

If customers have decided to purchase products, your responsibility is to get them through checkout as quickly as possible. To accomplish this, ask as few questions and expect as little as possible.

Most eCommerce retailers believe that reducing the number of stages in a checkout process is the best way to speed purchases, which explains the popularity of guest checkout. 

Guest checkout is simple. It doesn’t require shoppers to register, fill lengthy forms, or enter all personal details. It’s most beneficial to customers:

• Makes checkout and shopping faster
• It’s a trustworthy and secure option for customers that don’t want to share more details

However, for eCommerce retailers, guest checkout is no different than a multi-step checkout process—it has to be optimized and made seamless. 

Here’s how to do that:

• Don’t make guest checkout difficult; in other words, don’t force customers to sign up or login
• Use customers’ basic information such as email and contact details for post-purchase marketing communication
• Offer social login to make registering and sign in easy and fast

5. Remove Surprise, Extra Costs And Fees

One of the first things that puts off customers is hidden or surprise costs that pop up at the time of checkout. The result – customers leave the site as soon as they see additional charges. This means a higher cart abandonment rate for your online store.

Case in point, when StubHub (an online ticket seller) changed its pricing strategy to ‘all-in’ by including all the fees in the initially viewed price, the company saw a 10% increase in customer satisfaction and increase in sales.

To avoid this, do the follow:

• Provide as many details as possible up front
• Mention subtotal, taxes, shipping charges, any additional fees, etc.
• Instead of writing ‘shipping included’, word it as ‘free shipping’ to entice customers
• Follow tax and pricing compliance of the specific region and country you operate in to avoid any legal issues
• Clearly mention all the costs at the outset

6. Create An Order Confirmation Page

The order confirmation page is another underdog that’s a part of a seamless checkout process and can help you win conversions. But most likely you never paid attention to it.

Imagine yourself as a customer. You make a purchase on an eCommerce website. And all you get is a ‘Thank You For Your Purchase’ pop up. Instead, you should be taken to an ‘Order Confirmation’ page, which displays the order details, the expected delivery time, your delivery address, and other important details.

The latter would surely make you feel more satisfied.

The order confirmation page can also be optimized for future sales, customer loyalty, and engagement. 

Here’s how to make the most of the order confirmation page:

• Provide a confirmation of the transaction
• Provide a quick overview of the order and other details
• Keep the text simple and information relevant 
• If it’s a guest checkout, urge the customer to register for better perks in future
• Include delivery and shipping details
• Mention cancellation and return policies
• Mention customer support contact details
• Include social media buttons to keep the engagement going

Source 

7. Display Promo Codes

Almost 50% of customers expect brands to offer discounts, deals, promo codes, or special incentives—whether they are first-time or long-time customers of your store.

Now, if customers don’t find promo codes on the checkout page, they will go looking for it on the site or the better option for them, abandon cart!

To avoid this situation, make it easy for customers to discover and use promo or discount codes. You might be offering first-purchase discounts or reward points or coins, etc. on  your eCommerce store. 

Ensure that these points and codes are available on the checkout page. After all, why would you want engaged and high purchase potential customers to leave your website?

8. Make It Easy To Review Order And Edit

One of the most important checkout page best practices is to allow customers to review/edit their purchase details. 

Imagine this – customers may have added products by mistake or may have added wrong products, or may want to change the quantity, choose a different payment mode, etc. 

If you make the process of reviewing their purchase details and editing them difficult, customers might feel frustrated. And they may not have the energy to go through the entire shopping process all over again.

You can make their experience better by permitting them to easily modify their orders—the more power and flexibility you give to customers, the easier it will be for you to close sales. 

How To Set Up An Optimised And Seamless Checkout Process?

Consumers today are shopping on-the-go and they’re distracted. 

The only way you can convert your high-intent traffic into customers is by shortening their path to making a purchase. 

The faster one is able to move from adding an item to the cart to completing the transaction, the lesser are your drop-offs from the checkout stage. 

Struggling to improve the conversions on your checkout process? Opt for GoKwik’s KwikCheckout and unlock 10X conversions. Know more.