A Guide to Optimizing Your Checkout Page

How can you optimize your checkout page?

1. Offer guest checkout options
2. Provide social media logins
3. Add multiple payment methods
4. Include shipping cost promotions
5. Place a clear product description
6. Put checkout buttons on the page
7. Allow the user to change quantity of items
8. Make the review page accessible

Nowadays, more people are turning towards the convenience of online shopping. For business owners like you who are looking to improve the experience for your customers, you need to know how to properly optimize your checkout page. This is key to improving conversion rates and reducing instances of shopping cart abandonment. Continue reading to learn more.

Offer Guest Checkout Options

Is your e-commerce site only offering opportunities for log-in checkouts? Chances are your customers might be getting discouraged from buying your merchandise. The time it takes to simply input their log-in details may be enough to deter them from completing the sale.

If you haven’t considered it yet in the past, why not offer your customers a guest checkout option? This is a great way of speeding up the process for them — they won’t have to go through the time-consuming motions of coming up with a username, password, inputting their details, and verifying their account just to purchase a single product.

Provide Social Media Logins

Sometimes, you simply just need your customers to log into your site. In this case, you’ll want to make the process easier for them by integrating your login with a social media account of their choice.

Social media logins are a simplified way of getting your customers’ information without having to make them fill out multiple fields at any given time. This also offers them a more customized checkout experience — they can choose from different platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or even Twitter.

Add Multiple Payment Methods

If you’re starting out in the e-commerce industry, then you’ll find yourself offering your customers with limited modes of payment, usually in the form of a bank transfer. As you spend more time in such a competitive field, however, you might find that this will simply just not cut it.

Another way to provide a better checkout experience is by allowing your customers to pay through convenient and accessible options. It’s best to include a range of e-payments, online bank payments, or cash-on-delivery platforms to make the payment more seamless.

Make sure that any online money transfer that’s on your page is secure. If storing customer payment data, assure your customers that you’re using a safe and secure platform to do so.

Include Shipping Cost Promotions

Let’s say that you’re about to check out a smartphone from a website. Before you click on the “Pay Now” button, you will notice that the seller has included a shipping fee of Php 50.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes — do you really want to pay that extra shipping fee? If not, then make changes, like including shipping cost promotions. Offer limited-time promos like “free shipping fees for orders above Php 1,000”, or you could scrap the fee altogether.

More often than not, your customers wouldn’t want to shoulder the cost of those extra fees — yes, even if they’re less than 100 pesos. With these promotions, you’ll find soon enough that more people will want to keep buying from your store. You’ll also be able to limit the rate of purchase cancellations.

Place a Clear Product Description

An image of your product is not enough for your customers to want to buy them. You always want to be transparent with visitors on your e-commerce page, and one way of doing this is by placing a clear and accurate product description for your merchandise.

Include basic product details like features, variety, design, size, as well as other related specifications. This is a way for your customers to avoid being misled once they order the product.

Put Multiple Checkout Buttons

As simple as this tip may sound, it does significantly improve the way your customers navigate the site. Instead of placing the checkout button in a single location, try to add another button at the top of the page.

With another checkout button, your customers don’t have to scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page just so they could check out the product. This also offers them a more convenient way of browsing your store’s merchandise.

Allow The User To Change Quantity Of Items

Your customers may want to purchase multiple items of a given product. In less-than-ideal situations, they would have to constantly go back to the main product page and check out the product multiple times.

This situation may become too tedious for your customers, which is why you should provide a way for them to freely change the product quantity before they pay. Make sure that each quantity change is auto-updated so that the new cost will be reflected on the payment page.

Make the Reviews Page Accessible

Feedback is one of the factors that may influence your customers’ buying decisions. This is a way for them to make sure that the product turns out as advertised. With this in mind, you need to make the review page accessible.

Your customers can constantly refer back to the testimonials of customers who have previously bought the item. Authentic reviews that include images and videos are a great way for the customers to gauge how well the product’s quality and functionality hold up for the typical end-user.

Key Takeaway

Some of the tips to optimize your checkout page include: offering guest checkout, adding multiple payment options, integrating social media into the login process, and offering shipping fee promotions.

All of these can greatly improve your e-commerce platform’s navigability and usability. Don’t be surprised if you find that your customers would be spending more time on buying your items, rather than just leaving them in their shopping carts. The more consistently you improve your online store’s checkout processes, the better it would be for both you and the customers in the long run.