 | ARE YOU LOSING ONLINE CUSTOMERS? | | | | | 13 ways to optimise your shopping basket ... | Posted by Andrew Spencer on 30/11/2011 @ 21:48 |
Recent research indicates that 75% of online shoppers abandon their baskets or shopping trolleys before completing their purchase. This has been a problem for more than a decade and without careful attention to optimising the process of checking out of your e-commerce website it will remain a problem, and lose you a lot of sales ...
 To get them to enter this number, the buyer must have confidence in your system
Operators of e-commerce sites that have been properly organised would consider abandonment greater than 35% a crisis! Here are a few pointers towards optimising the check out experience on your site:
- One incredibly obvious thing to do is to secure the checkout process. Just a few days ago I came across a hotel reservation site that was asking for my card number on a connection that was not secured/padlocked! I bailed out instantly.
- Include a progress indicator and transaction status on each check out page. This applies however many pages you have within the process.
- Don't require customers to register. There should be a guest route to checkout. You will capture most of the information you need about a customer anyway during checkout - address, email address etc.
- Enable the review of previous steps in the checkout process and ideally a route back. Also have a link back to the product so it can be reviewed during the check out process.
- Declare delivery costs as early as possible in the process, ideally before check out. Try to offer free or flat rate delivery.
- An obvious simplification of the check out process is to offer the facility to fill in the delivery address from the billing address.
- Always show product availability at the point products are being viewed, something that Amazon does very well. The customer should never have to wait until checkout to see if what they want is available.
- Whenever information is incorrectly entered or missing give a polite and meaningful error message. Never make the customer feel foolish!
- Format fields to help the customer. One example is the card number field. Format it into 4 groups of 4 numbers to make it easier to enter. Mistakes are common in this field.
- Make sure the customer knows you are a real company. Have your company name and number and contact details on every page of the check out process - it reassures.
- Offer the option to telephone you. It will rarely be used but again is reassuring to the customer.
- Offering the option to enter coupon codes at the wrong point and/or in the wrong circumstances can decrease the conversion rate by 90%. If customers see a coupon code entry field during checkout they will likely leave the checkout process to search for the code! Only present coupon code entry to those customers offered a promotion on their way into the site or where you have expectation that they will have the coupon to hand (from a catalogue for example). Hide the field and ask the question whether they have a code to enter.
- Track errors and exits. This will help spot points in the process where check out is failing regularly.
There is a lot more that could have been said here. The check out is the most complex part of your e-commerce system and the most difficult to get right. Why not get Workload Innovation to review your online selling and help you optimise it?
Until next time ... 
ANDREW SPENCER
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 | During Andrews extensive business career he has worked in a wide cross section of companies, specialising in the creation of contact centres and business systems, software development, telecommunications and project management. Andrews key skills are:
Business planning and strategy
Matching technology to business needs
Project management
Software development and implementation
Designing and implementing business systems
His work has included sourcing and implementing a new integrated telecoms system for National Energy Services, designing and project managing a new IT and telephony structure for the Greyhound Racing Association, and directing technology development for Wembley plc.
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