If you have an online eCommerce store, you already know how important it is to turn potential customers into leads. One of the best ways to give your customers a smooth shopping experience is to improve the way your store checks out customers. So, in this post, I’ll talk about some problems that customers have at the checkout and how you can fix them to make the process better. Let’s begin!
Checkout Flow: What You Need to Know
In a nutshell, checkout flow is the whole process and set of steps that a customer goes through when buying something from an online store. All of these important steps would be part of the store checkout cycle, from looking at the products on your website to adding them to the cart and filling out shipping information to making a payment.
If your online store’s checkout process isn’t smooth or has steps that aren’t needed, it can hurt your conversion rate and cause people to leave items in their carts. So, the conversion rate of a store would be better if it was easier to check out.
How to Make Your Online Store’s Checkout Process Better?
Now that you know all the basics, let’s look at how to improve the flow of your online store’s checkout process with these tips:
Know where your customers are hurting.
This is the first thing you should do to make your online store’s checkout process better. If possible, you should take a step back and try to understand how your customers feel when they shop in your store. Most of the time, these are some of the biggest problems that customers run into at the checkout counter:
- Surcharges you didn’t expect (like taxes or shipping costs)
- Any of the items in the cart being out of stock
- The trouble of making a user account to buy something
- Because of where they live, they had fewer shipping options.
- The time it takes to ship is longer than expected.
- The store only offered a few ways to pay.
- Errors, security problems, or any other kind of technical glitch
There could be a number of other problems that come up when your customers check out of your store. You can talk to them directly through social media or do surveys to find out what their specific problems are. Once you know what the biggest problems are in your store, you can figure out how to fix them.
Have your store’s interface be clean and easy to use.
The interface of any platform is one of the biggest problems that customers run into during the whole checkout process. To work on it, you need to pay attention to how your store looks.
Most experts say that when designing an online store, it’s best to keep things simple. It’s fine to use templates that are already out there, but don’t rely on them too much and think about making them fit your needs.
Make sure that your online store is easy to use and that all of your products are shown in the right way. Also, put information about each product on the page for that product to keep your customers up to date.
Enable Guest Checkouts
Let’s say you sent your audience from somewhere else to your online store, where they put some items in their cart. Now, if you make your customers sign up for an account before they can buy anything from your online store, it can turn them down. If they don’t have enough time, they can just leave the cart behind.
So, to make the checkout process better, you should let guests log in. So, your customers can just type in their address and finish their purchase without having to sign up for an account. It would not only save them time, but it would also help your online store sell more.
Make sure that your online store is easy to use and that all of your products are shown in the right way. Also, put information about each product on the page for that product to keep your customers up to date.
Enable Guest Checkouts
Let’s say you sent your audience from somewhere else to your online store, where they put some items in their cart. Now, if you make your customers sign up for an account before they can buy anything from your online store, it can turn them down. If they don’t have enough time, they can just leave the cart behind.
So, to make the checkout process better, you should let guests log in. So, your customers can just type in their address and finish their purchase without having to sign up for an account. It would not only save them time, but it would also help your online store sell more.
One of the best ways to make the checkout process go smoothly is to use a simple form. You can ask for more information when they sign up for an account, but keep things simple when they check out. Just ask for the important information to speed up the checkout process.
Give reliable payment options
As I said above, the limited payment options on your website can be one of the biggest problems with the checkout process as a whole. For example, I usually buy all kinds of things with PayPal, and if an online store doesn’t have it, it can be a turnoff for me.
That’s why I think it’s very important for your website to accept all popular payment methods, like Master Card, Visa, and Discover. You should also let people pay for things on your store with trusted wallets like PayPal, Skrill, and Wise, as well as debit and credit cards.
Make Your Online Store Mobile Friendly
A recent survey says that by 2025, more than 70% of people will only use their smartphones to connect to the internet. This might sound strange. This shows more than ever how important it is to have an online store that works well on phones.
Even if you don’t have a mobile app for your store, you should still make sure that its website works well on mobile devices. This would help more people find your store and make it easier for your customers to check out while they’re out and about.
During the checkout process, use visual indicators.
You can make the whole checkout flow process more fun and interesting for your customers if you want to. There are a lot of things you can do to make your customers feel more important and to save them time.
For example, you can use special visual cues to tell them where they are in the checkout process. This will automatically take away any surprises that could happen to your customers while they are shopping.
Follow up with communication after check-out
Last, but most importantly, don’t just leave your customers hanging after they’ve made a purchase. You should show a success message on your store’s interface to let people know that their purchase went through.
Also, you should tell them the same thing by sending them an email or a message through the way they want to talk. You can also send them information about where their packages are and other details after they have checked out.
Your turn
If you follow this guide, I’m sure you’ll be able to make your online store’s checkout process and user experience better as a whole. First, you should try to find out what problems your customers are having when they are checking out of your store.
Then, by using some professional tips, you can turn every shopping cart into a possible sale. You could also use a reliable tool like dropship-empire to give your online store more power and make it easier to manage everything in one place.