The checkout page is the last step in creating a customer from a visitor. Optimizing checkout is a key to reducing cart abandonment and driving sales.
Here are some essential practices you can implement on your checkout page to deliver significant results:
8 Things You Must Be Doing During Checkout
- Include Customer Testimonials & Trust Symbols
- One-Page Checkout
- Offer Free Shipping
- Optimize Your Checkout Page for Mobile
- Highlight Upsell Offers
- Use Exit-Intent Pop-Ups
- Offer “Save Item” as an Option
Let’s dive into each and see how you can easily upgrade your checkout.
Include Customer Testimonials & Trust Symbols
To get the customer to purchase, you first have to gain their trust.
Adding customer testimonials on your checkout page reassures the prospect they’re making the right choice. Seeing others enjoy your product gives them the confidence to make the purchase.
Furthermore, if they don’t know you’re brand, they may hesitate on the quality of your product and service. You can promote trust by using testimonial & review apps like Okendo, Product Reviews by Shopify, or Stamped.io.
These apps make it easy to collect and publish reviews on your home, product, or checkout pages.
Security is also a big concern for customers since you handle their payment information. A good tactic to give them peace of mind is to include security badges on your checkout page, such as the below:
If customers know their payments are in good hands, they’ll be more likely to follow through with their purchase.
One-Page Checkout
Any friction during the buying process will cause customers to drop their carts. No one wants to go through loops and holes to make a final purchase.
The checkout process must be as simple and straightforward as possible. The best way to simplify your checkout page and get customers across the finish line is to offer a one-page checkout:
One-page checkout works because it’s shorter and reduces the steps the customer has to go through. It’s convenient and can lead to better conversions.
However, we recommend testing multi-page and single-page to see what works best for you.
Offer Free Shipping
Free Shipping can be a powerful trigger for conversion. Customers feel 90% more motivated to buy more when free shipping is involved, so you should consider offering it on your checkout page.
As a small business, however, you may not be in a position to offer free shipping. Free shipping isn’t free to you and can hurt your profit margins in the long term if you’re not careful. If you’re wondering how to decrease your shipping costs, you may be interested in the cubic pricing program.
Optimize Your Checkout Page for Mobile
More and more customers are using their smartphones to shop. By next year, mobile sales will represent a whopping 54% of total e-commerce revenue. It’s the reason why your checkout page needs to be mobile-responsive.
You must also ensure your checkout page loads fast on mobile, especially when the customer gives you their payment information. 53% of visitors will ditch your site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
Highlight Upsell Offers
Upselling is a sales technique to persuade the customer to buy more items, upgrades, or add-ons once they make a purchase. It’s a tactic used by top brands such as Amazon, GoDaddy, and Booking.com.
Your checkout page represents extra sales for your store. As the customer is about to checkout, you can recommend complementary products.
It’s a great way to boost your customer lifetime value (CLV) and make prospects come back. Here’s an example from Dollar Shave Club for inspiration:
The best tool we recommend to help you do this is Carthook. Once the customer checks out, Carthook sends them three different upsell offers. The platform auto-fills the page with the customer’s details, so they don’t have to re-enter their payment information.
Use Exit-Intent Popups
Just as a customer abandons their cart or is about to leave your site, you can launch exit-intent popups to promote discounts they can use for their purchase:
Exit-intent pop-ups work well for two reasons. First off, it gives the customer an incentive to stay on your checkout page. Secondly, your store gets a second chance to make a sale.
There are various tools you can download on Shopify that help you capture the customer’s attention with pop-ups. Check out our 8 top picks of pop-up tools for boosting sales.
Remove Any Distractions on the Checkout Page
A key theme that we’re repeating here is keeping everything as simple as possible. To maximize your conversions, you need to eliminate any distractions that might draw the customer away from making a purchase.
There are various ways to do this. You want to avoid having any ads, navigation bars, or eye-catching graphics that might get in the way. You also don’t want to surprise customers with hidden fees they weren’t aware of before.
Offer “Save Item” as an Option
Lastly, there are many reasons why your customer doesn’t follow through with their purchase. They may not be ready to buy, or something distracted them as they were about to check out.
To help returning visitors, make it possible for them to save your product so they can go back to checkout whenever they have time. Amazon does this on their store with their “wishlist” feature, so customers can come back at any time to finish their purchase:
Conclusion
The checkout is the final and most critical part of the buyer’s journey. Even with the best marketing and products in the world, customers will ditch your store if the checkout process is not optimized the right way. By applying our tips above, you’ll be on your way to setting up a killer checkout page and boosting your sales.
