A recent white paper from Baymard shows how online retailers can optimize their checkout process to avoid abandoned purchases. Our partner Amazon Pay, who commissioned the research report, summarizes below the 6 tips that eCommerce professionals should take to heart to convince their customers to complete the sale.
69 percent of all shopping cart abandonments avoidable
In fact, studies have shown that the average abandonment rate in online stores is 69 percent. This means that two out of three customers add products to their shopping cart but never complete the purchase. Baymard prepared a research report on payment optimization and cart abandonment reduction on behalf of Amazon Pay. The goal was to understand why shoppers add items to their cart but then decide not to purchase them. These cart abandonments are a persistent problem for online retailers. However, the study found that with a few tricks, retailers can achieve an average increase of 35 percent – simply by improving the checkout design.
The following 6 tips will help:
1. optimization of form fields
The average checkout contains 15 form fields, twice as many as necessary
Baymard’s checkout usability single-item testing and large-scale eye-tracking studies have consistently shown that users fixate on form fields during the checkout process. In fact, the number of blank fields displayed directly correlates with the user’s checkout experience on a website.
In short, the more form fields users are presented with, the more likely it is that their checkout experience will suffer. This also increases the likelihood that they will abandon the process without completing the checkout.
Good news is that the number of form fields required to complete a checkout can be reduced to as few as 6-8 fields.
2. pre-filled form fields
Pre-fills the information that is entered several times by the majority of customers
Buyers perceive pages full of empty form fields as a high hurdle: they worry about how long it will take them to enter all the information. It also increases the potential for spelling and other errors.
Tests by Baymard found that 26 percent of eCommerce websites ask for the same information multiple times during their checkout process. Customers are most likely to have to provide the following information multiple times: Phone number, name, zip code, email address.
If the forms are pre-filled with the information previously entered by the shoppers, the customer only needs to quickly check the fields before proceeding to ensure the information is correct.
3. perception of website security 19 percent of users are reluctant to trust websites with credit card details
19 percent of users are reluctant to trust websites with credit card details
Most users do not have a sound understanding of the technical workings of encrypted form pages. When it comes to the security of a form, buyers rely on their perception instead. That is, they tend to “go with their gut”.
The testers consistently observed that shoppers’ perceptions of security were based on their customer review of visual aspects of the credit card input interface. They perceived interfaces without a clear visual design or security seal as less secure than those with a visual enclosure of the form fields.
4. data protection concerns of the buyers
Leave the decision to the customer – or give your reasons
Not all the information we ask our buyers for is equally important to them. The top priority is, of course, customers’ card details. But our tests revealed several other types of information that a subset of shoppers are very reluctant to share. For example, it is hardly surprising that providing a passport number purely for verification purposes is punished with a high abandonment rate. On the other hand, it is striking how many shoppers are more likely to consider canceling their order if they are asked to provide their date of birth (35%), telephone number (15%) and gender (11%).
Leave it up to the customer to decide whether they want to provide this information – or give your reasons. It is often enough to simply explain to them why the information is necessary.
5. the reluctance of buyers to create a forced account
37 percent of users do not want to create a new account
When customers are forced to create an eCommerce account to check out, they often perceive this as a hurdle. Unlike many UX issues, the solution to this problem is clear: shoppers should not be forced to create another account if they simply want to place an order on a new website.
In general, tests show that even for large eCommerce websites, conversion rates often increase by 10-30 percent when moving from forced account creation to the optional model.
6. payment via third-party providers
8 percent complained about a lack of payment options
In our latest checkout study, shoppers’ expectations have shifted: A clearly identifiable subset of shoppers are relying on third-party providers to provide payment methods. In fact, 8 percent of all shoppers abandoned one or more orders in the past quarter solely due to the lack of a desired third-party provider payment option. In fact, 83 percent of the top 60 U.S. and international eCommerce websites now offer at least one third-party payment option.
Tests have shown that some customers who make purchases from domestic merchants have a strong preference for external payment methods. This is largely due to a combination of an improved checkout process (less typing) and data security (no trust in the merchant site).
The white paper itself provides many more details on the cases described above as well as tips for implementation and practical examples. So if you want to delve further into the exciting topic of checkout optimization and streamline your own processes, you can find the document via the button. In addition, Amazon Pay is also offering a webinar on this very topic on Monday, July 22 – you can register free of charge here.
