Conversion Matters

E-Consultancy have released a new report about the online checkout:

“Almost a year ago now we started on an ambitious project to try and define how the perfect online checkout would work…

A lot of interviews, research, roundtables and surveys later we’ve finally published Online Retail 2007: Checkout Special“

Anyway, it’s rather long, so here is a short summary of the interesting bits.

What’s the current state of conversion rates on online checkouts?

• The average abandonment rate for shopping carts is around 60%
• Cart abandonment is a huge loss of potential revenue for e-commerce

They’ve actually written a short blog post, with a graph, explaining why people abandon the checkout.

The top three general reasons were:

1. Checkouts suffering from avoidable design problems, such as hidden delivery charges and technical problems
2. Non-user friendly processes within the checkout, for example forcing users to register
3. Some checkouts are abandoned simply because the user was comparison shopping

How to improve conversion rates in the online checkout process

They state the obvious by saying:

“the faster and simpler the checkout process, the more likely it is to be completed”

However, they do cover some specifics for improving the conversion rate. Firstly they say you should make a ‘purchase proposition’ explaining clearly the product (sizes/colours etc), the price (including VAT and delivery), the delivery (when will it be delivered?), the payment (how can it be payed?), the registration (is registration required?) before they reach the checkout.

While this won’t necessarily help you generate more revenue (you might still have a broken checkout system), it should help to lower abandonment rates as customers won’t get half way through your checkout and then abandon due to delivery costs or the fact they have to register first.

They also talk about the design of the checkout itself, saying that simplicity is key. Specifically they say:

• Make the process clear and appear simple to the customer
• Make data entry logical and intuitive, and/or provide help along the way
• Enclose the checkout process - i.e. remove all unneeded links to the rest of the site so the customer can stay focuessed on the checkout process
• Make the process navigatable without loss of information - i.e. if a page reloads, make sure any data they entered is still there
• Design customer-friendly forms - i.e. the visual layout and appearence of the form
• Make the process appear trustworthy - i.e. by offering contact details, hosting the checkout on a secure server etc