Top reasons for bounce backs from the checkout page, And how Analytics can help?
Shopping cart abandonment is a curse for the eCommerce store owners. While not all the abandoned carts are your lost sales, there is still a major percentage of carts that could have been converted into sales. If we take a look at the top reasons for bounce backs or cart abandonments revealed in a research by Baymard Institute, most of them could have been fixed by optimizing the checkout page.
It’s very important to track, check, and understand your checkout page analytics and implement the optimization to eliminate the bounce back boosters from the checkout process Setting up a checkout page analytics will let you discover the insights like:
If a customer actually visited the checkout page or not?
If a customer entered the email address or not?
If a customer reached to the payment methods?
If a customer completed the transaction?
Many such questions can be answered by analyzing the checkout page behavior of your visitors. Moreover, the answers to these questions will help you optimize the checkout by fixing the major issues that are stopping the customers from completing the checkout process despite having a definite buying intention. For example, if more customers are quitting the checkout process just before making the payments, it may mean that:
Either they are not able to find their desired payment options
Or, the order total while making the payment is suddenly showing more than what was shown in the cart initially (hidden cost).
Let's understand the top reasons for cart abandonment from the checkout page and find out how can you overcome them with simple tweaks.
1. The hidden cost is a conversion killer Most of the websites still do not reveal the actual order total up-front before the payment page in the checkout process. As a result, the highest percentage of shoppers who leave the cart orphaned is due to this reason alone; 61 % to be exact according to Baymard’s research. Sites taking overhead, extra, or hidden costs must reveal the same up front in the checkout process. In fact, the best place to reveal the estimated cost of the cart is right after the shipping option selection by the customer. But before that, you must also reveal the taxes included (if any) right in the shopping cart summary. Costs like shopping charges are expected ones, but the overhead taxes are
generally not expected by the customers. Revealing the taxes at the later stage of the checkout process will surprise the customers and such surprises are never liked by them.
2. Compulsory account creation About 35% of customers left the checkout process just because the sites asked for a compulsory account creation to make a purchase. When so much of alternative options like social login and guest checkout are easily accessible on the websites, it does not seem a wise idea to offer only the traditional account creation option on the checkout page. You should understand that if not you, all your rival sites are already providing the social login and guest checkout options. So, why would the shoppers bother about creating an account manually unless you have a very strong reason to still hold them back? And why should not they just visit your rival's site instead where there is nothing like "create an account to continue shopping"? There are three possible solutions to this problem: 1. Cut short the account creation form and make it as simple as possible so that creating an account becomes no more a big deal. 2. Integrate a social login option on your checkout page. Allow customers to sign-up or sign-in using their social media account credentials. 3. For the customers who still do not want to create an account or log in, provide guest checkout option. Guest checkouts generally do not save the customers details in the database. As a result, it might not be possible for the customers to track the order after placing it. Therefore, if you are offering the guest checkout option, prompt the customer to register an account by simply using the guest checkout details of the customer.
3. Too long/complicated checkout process The length and complexity of a checkout process are quite a relative term. For some users, a multi-page checkout is lengthy and complex, while you cannot say even a one-page checkout won't be long if it asks too many details. Amazon's checkout process, for example, is a multi-page structure, but still, it's quite simple and fast. It's because it doesn't ask for too many details, just the
important ones. The account creation step would ask for your name, email, and your desired password and that's it, you have an Amazon account.
So, either you are offering a multi-page or single-page checkout, the main aim should be to reduce the number of entries in forms used in the checkout process. Whether it the account creation form or the billing/shipping address form, customers are never going to like if you ask more than enough. For example, if you have already asked the mobile number there is no need to ask for the office or home phone number. Also asking fax number from an individual customer would make the things complex. You can take a reference regarding the best checkout form designing from “5 things you probably didn’t know about eCommerce checkout�.
4. Unsatisfactory return policy Customers getting disappointed from your return policy is more of a result of your actual business policy. However, in order to provide a satisfactory return policy, you must also have an efficient RMA system that allows you to tweak your return structure. Sometimes, you might want to offer your customers a flexible return policy but your RMA system might not allow you to do the same. For example, it would be a pretty conversion friendly policy to allow customers to return or replace the partial quantity of products from a whole purchase.
Say, a customer bought 5 t-shirts at once, but found that 2 of them are defective or not fitting to the size. In a normal situation, he would have to return all the 5 t-shirts to get a refund. However, if you can make your return flexible and allow the customer to return only the 2 defective t-shirts, that would be a convenience for the customer. Some small tweaks in the return policies can make it flexible and at least you won't lose your customers because of your complex return structure. You can have a look at the PrestaShop return Manager module that allows the full as well partial returns of the products. It shows a perfect example of flexible and easy return process for the customers.
Over to you The checkout page is the most important element of the whole conversion funnel. Most of the customers reaching on the checkout page have the buying intentions at some level. It depends on the ability of the checkout page and your policies mentioned there to persuade the customers to complete the checkout process. There could be numerous ways to make your checkout process appealing, but all that goes in vain if you don't know what exactly is stopping the customers from completing it. Therefore it's very important to always need to track the analytics in your checkout process and find out the loopholes that are draining the conversions. PrestaShop checkout page analytics can be a useful solution that can help you track all these important metrics of the checkout process.