Checkout friction consists of all the different hoops a customer must jump through to buy your product. Some friction is necessary, some isn’t, but it all adds up to the leading cause of transaction abandonment for online merchants. So every merchant should evaluate their transaction process, and ensure their payment gateway is not cluttered with unnecessary friction points.
Experts have determined that the “want” to “buy” transaction process should take no longer than 134 seconds—where the clock starts when the “checkout” or “join” is clicked. Here are five steps that can significantly reduce checkout friction:
1. Begin with the basics.
The first step to ensure a friction-free gateway is the old-school fundamentals: good grammar, design continuity, fallbacks. Spam is universally famous for poor spelling and grammar; of if your gateway has any of these mistakes, you risk looking shady. Make sure your users’ experience is consistent throughout the purchase process. Design colors, logos, and fonts should reinforce your brand presence within the transaction. And make sure users can process without JavaScript, in case they’ve disabled it, with php/html fallbacks.
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2. Rev UP the UX.
UX is geek-speak for the “user experience”, and your UX game has got to be on point when it comes to your transaction. You may have your site optimized for search engines, page speed and all that, but if you’re not optimizing your transactions, it’s all a big waste.
- Reduce your gateway to a single page: display your payment forms + cart contents & totals together.
- Economy of fields: keep your required fields on your form to a bare minimum.
- Make transactions on mobile devices easier with intuitive, thumb-friendly designs.
- Include auto-fill functions that API with your users’ operating systems, including duplicating shipping and billing addresses.
3. Show them the way.
In addition to fundamentals in grammar & design as well as a streamlined UX, make sure you are guiding users through the transaction. Include a progress bar of no more than three steps. Confirm their entries and inform them of what they need to do—if they need to reply to an email, if they’re being redirected, etc. And always assure them that their information is secure.
4. Be our guest!
Give up on the required registered profile for customers. User registration is a leading cause of transaction abandonment. As valuable as a user account may be, it is killing your sales. What is worth more to you: a transaction or a user’s email? The answer is the transaction every time.
5. Yes, we speak money!
Your gateway must have multiple supports for currencies and language; if it’s as good as money, accept it. You should accept all secure payment methods such as paypal and bitcoin, whenever possible.
These are just the basics. Checkout friction is as much a leading cause of lost revenue as fraud and chargebacks. As with fraud and chargebacks, the challenges of friction are unique to each merchant. For a more comprehensive and customized review of your checkout process, contact us at ChargebackHelp.