The Anatomy of the Perfect Ecommerce Checkout

ecommerce, ecommerce analytics, ecommerce checkout, ecommerce shopping cart, online shopping cart, shopping cart abandonmentAs an online retailer, your revenue depends on how effectively your shopping cart converts shoppers into buyers. Unfortunately, most retailers are not doing this well – nearly 70% of online shopping carts are abandoned.

There are a host of reasons why shoppers don’t ultimately make a purchase – they’re comparison shopping, the shipping cost is higher than expected, the item is on backorder, they have time restraints, etc. But there is one major influence within any online retailer’s control: the checkout process.

In order to create the perfect ecommerce checkout – one that is optimized from the shopper’s perspective – you must examine checkout analytics to understand when, where and why shoppers are dropping out of the purchase process. If you don’t, you’re leaving money on the table.

This is why at Symphony we embarked on a major study to develop the perfect checkout. We reviewed a year’s worth of client data, performing extensive quantitative analysis on checkout flow, cart abandonment and review of support tickets. We identified three major areas for improvement:

Condensed & Optimized Form Fields

If the perfect checkout were a person, he/she would live a minimalist lifestyle. For a minimalist, every possession serves a purpose. Similarly, the perfect checkout should only ask for essential information. Here are the best practices we uncovered:

  • Expose as few form fields as possible: Just ask for email, name, address and credit card so the process isn’t overwhelming for the shopper. Try not to show more than four form fields. If you must go over, start with a few fields and reveal more as the shopper moves along.
  • Ask for credit card details at the end: People are motivated to complete things they start, so the more “easy” fields a customer completes (such as email and address), the more likely they are to finish the checkout.
  • Progressive form fields: Shoppers shouldn’t see a field unless it is relevant to them, and they should not be asked to re-enter information that’s saved in the system. For example, a registered customer with an email-based account should not be prompted to sign in using Facebook.

In addition to condensing fields, studies have shown that nearly 20% of cart abandoners leave due to time restraints. Address auto-fill is no longer merely a nice to have, especially with the increasing rate of shopping on mobile devices. Allowing shoppers to select and auto-fill an address after typing just a few characters – much like Google Maps offers when searching for directions – will speed up the checkout flow and minimize shipping errors.

A final key finding uncovered in our study was that people were abandoning carts to look for coupon codes. In a perfect checkout, the coupon field is de-emphasized. Shoppers with coupons should see a coupon link and have to click on it to uncover a coupon field. In other words, force customers with coupons to perform an extra step to use it and make coupons less obvious to anyone who doesn’t have one.

Every feature that speeds up checkout helps move more shoppers through the process and reduces cart abandonment.

Professional Error Handling

Error handling is the shopping cart equivalent of a personal assistant, a very important but often overlooked part of the perfect checkout. Like a great personal assistant, really good error handling is exceptionally attentive, detail oriented and eliminates issues before they appear. Here’s how error handling can reduce customer confusion and abandonment before they occur:

  • Check all fields on checkout submission and automate error messages so they appear dynamically as each form field is filled out.
  • Show inline error messages for fields that have errors, missing or invalid information.

Frustration with an error-filled order form is another big reason shoppers drop off. The perfect checkout catches mistakes throughout the process, eliminating the chances of seeing multiple errors at the end.

Consistent Functionality across Devices

Last but not least, the perfect checkout is perfect across all devices. It is critical that the checkout process is easy and offers the same functionality across all screen sizes.

Evaluating and enhancing your checkout with these features will get you closer to a perfect checkout and help you improve your conversion rate. We found in tests that our checkout anatomy delivered up to a 25% improvement in conversion rates over time.

Whether you follow Symphony’s checkout anatomy or make small changes to checkout text and design, there are always new ways to enhance the checkout experience. As David Ogilvy famously said, “Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving.” The same is true for checkout.

Henry Kim is co-founder and president of Symphony Commerce