Understanding the Importance of Checkout Flow
I’ve spent countless hours buying things online and I always find myself looking for seamless, convenient and efficient checkout flows. The checkout process isn’t the place to be clever with design. More or less. Strikes Me As it’s about getting me from a to b with as little friction as possible.
You want my money, let me give it to you - quickly and painlessly. I find that most e-commerce sites make the checkout process harder than it needs to be.
And this can be a deal breaker for me and many other shoppers. Complex navigation, confusing payment options, hidden shipping fees - all of these can lead to cart abandonment, even if I was really interested in a product. That’s not something you want as an online retailer. But the opposite is also true.
If your checkout process is straightforward and friction-free, you’re more likely to get people to follow through on their purchases. These days there’s no shortage of products online, so the one thing that sets you apart could be an easy-to-use checkout flow. And this doesn’t just mean more sales or higher revenue, although those are nice perks. It also gives people a positive shopping experience that makes them want to come back again and again.
In fact, that’s usually what does it for me - if buying something is quick and easy, I’m far more likely to shop there in future.
Step 1: Simplifying the Cart Experience
What can I say. The best things in life are fairly simple. Not easy, but simple. Do you remember the last time you had a shopping experience that felt so seamless it slipped past you like a breeze.
Yeah, me neither. These rare moments of frictionless digital retail should be common but too often the online shopping cart feels like a traffic jam at 5pm. We can solve this.
But before making things better, we need to get a clearer sense of the horror that is a bad cart experience. Sort of. Visualise confusing layouts, unclear navigation, unnecessary clutter, hidden fees, surprise taxes or multiple pop-ups all begging you to spend more.
Worse yet - discount codes that just don’t work. People come to your website for an item and not just any item - they want your item. If you’re not making it easy for them to pay you money for your products, you’re just turning away business. I am not suggesting that checkout pages should look boring.
There’s always room for personality in design choices. You simply need to ensure they are clean and intuitive, with clear calls-to-action, easily recognisable buttons and consistent iconography across the site. Use thoughtful spacing and structure for logical visual hierarchy, make use of colour and font for contrast so there’s clear separation between sections and real-time validation feedback so people get instant answers if something is off. Basically, if it isn’t helping someone check out faster - leave it out.
For now anyway.
Step 2: Streamlining Payment Options
People used to like surprises at the checkout. You know, the odd “pay what you want” scenarios in random boutiques in Paris or Brooklyn. But it’s really not a nice feeling at the checkout if you suddenly see that the payment methods are limited.
You’re already primed to buy - but if the payment method that you want is not on there, then your first thought might be - hang on, what else is missing from this website. Is it secure. You wouldn’t be wrong to think this.
All of us have had a terrible experience with a payment gateway on a website, and it just becomes something that you associate the brand with. So, when brands consider options for payment for their customers - the more extensive and accessible these options are, the more likely they’re going to close sales.
If there’s one thing that consumer behaviour today shows, is that users care about flexibility and security when they buy online. So here’s something that I want to challenge. If someone’s selected their product and added it to their cart - why not let them select a payment method right then.
Instead of waiting till the end of their checkout flow, if they already know how they’d like to pay, it’s one less step in a five (or seven. ) step checkout process. What’s that thing techies say.
Less friction, more conversion.
Step 3: Enhancing Trust and Security
I’ve found myself shopping online for hours and have noticed a small detail most e-commerce sites seem to get right. Most times, it’s rather easy to spot at a glance, but the difference it makes can be quite subtle. It’s the little security badges at the bottom of checkout pages, usually with a green check mark or something similar. It seems that putting trust at the centre of an online shop is all about making customers feel secure enough to share their details, especially in an era where scammers are getting more innovative by the day.
And of course, this matters more than ever now that people seem to be more aware of what happens when their data falls into the wrong hands. Ensuring security isn’t just about having a few lines in your privacy policy or making sure your payment gateway is working, although those are important too. I think it’s easier than ever for customers to figure out if a site is dodgy or not.
Just ask them to leave your site for a third-party payment solution and they’ll probably walk away. But inviting customers to save payment information for future purchases might be the sort of thing that tips the scales in your favour. Or not.
I don’t know if I’m a fan of saving my card details on every site I’ve ever purchased from though. With all this said, building trust with customers should extend beyond security, privacy, and customer protection. It’s also about treating them as people and not just potential sales you want to make. The good thing about this is that taking steps in this direction can actually result in people spending more time on your site and sharing it with their friends as well.
Step 4: Optimizing for Mobile Users
You have probably seen people - kids, mostly - walking down the street staring at their phones. You have likely even grumbled about it under your breath. But, this is where the future is heading and there appears to be no stopping it.
Except for the one time I bumped into a tree while texting a mate. Sort of. But that is apparently neither here nor there. Sort of.
No matter where you are in the world, if you look around yourself, you will realise that mobile phones have almost single handedly taken over our lives. Rather, their constant presence in our life has made us accustomed to their ease and comfort - something we look for everywhere else. This translates to every facet of life - including shopping online.
Now if the process takes too long or appears complicated, people are simply going to leave the site and move on. Not only does it need to be simple and straightforward, but also run smoothly from start to finish. This makes optimising your site for mobile users one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. And also remember that simplicity does not mean boring or confusing - after all, you want your customers to stick around and return.
If you manage to strike a fine balance between these things (which is reportedly more complicated than it might seem) then chances are, your business is poised for major success.
Measuring Success: Analyzing Checkout Metrics
There's an assumption that checkout is seemingly a time for mindless conversion. All we need to do is pass a few speed bumps like forms and payment options, and success. Another one in the bag.
But it doesn't have to be so. Transactional, pun intended. There are rarely opportunities to strengthen the user experience with every interaction.
Especially when we measure checkout against metrics that matter. There are many. And depending on the business, some matter more than others.
It can get overwhelming. But if you want to analyse success, it's best to follow the basic formula of test, rinse and repeat. For this, businesses must know where users are presumably dropping off and why they're dropping off. It's important to test different iterations and find what works for the business based on these experiments and the data analysed from them.
Once you have hit all your goals or optimised metrics, you can continue to monitor the data over time and keep improving it as needed. The way I see it, the great thing about modern analytics tools is that they're getting more intelligent every day. Everything can be tracked - clicks, scrolls, how long someone has spent on a page.
They all indicate something about user behaviour and inform decisions made about UX design. At the end of the day, all of these insights boil down to the quality of the user experience you've designed - or not designed - for your checkout flow. If your users are spending too much time at checkout or if conversions are dropping after an update, you've probably created unnecessary friction and you're losing out on sales because of poor user experience design.