Every Shopify merchant understands the importance of ensuring that customers have the best experience possible on their site. They optimize for search, ensure navigation is straightforward and easy, and create detailed product pages containing as much information as their customers might need.

They do all of this to get users to the checkout page, and then many of them forget about actually ensuring that the checkout process is a positive one.

If you’ve ever struggled with a difficult, complicated, or faulty checkout process when trying to make a purchase, you’ll understand why this can be such a big problem. Having a complex checkout process causes 11% of abandoned carts, and since shopping carts have an average abandonment rate of 67.4%, that’s a lot of money you’re leaving on the table.

There are steps you can to improve the checkout process on Shopify for your customers, decreasing abandoned cart rates and improving the customer’s experience, and in this post we’re going to go over each one.

What Your Checkout Process Should Accomplish

Your checkout process should be simple. It should efficiently and quickly move users through the purchasing experience, starting at the click of the “Checkout Now” CTA and moving them all the way through to the order confirmation page.

The checkout process should:

  • Collect payment
  • Gather data needed in order to deliver the product
  • Provide customers with full information about their purchase, including total costs with all fees included, shipping method, and expected shipment/delivery dates

Your checkout process should always improve the customer’s experience instead of hindering it. Get the information that you absolutely need in order to fulfill the order, and leave it at that. Remember that a 11% of carts are abandoned due to complex checkout processes; don’t risk that happening because you’re trying to mine more information out of a potential customer.

Let’s take a look at specific measures you can implement to improve the checkout process for your Shopify customers (and get more sales in the process, too!).

Offer Multiple Payment Options

Offering your customers multiple payment options is always welcome. It gives them more flexibility with how they want to pay, increasing the likelihood of conversions.

Common payment options include accepting credit cards, but enabling instant-pay options like Visa Pay, PayPal, or Amazon Pay are good choices, too. The latter options are lightning-fast, which makes users more likely to get all the way through the checkout process (especially if it means not having to get off the couch to hunt down a credit card). They also offer an extra layer of security and peace of mind to customers who may not feel comfortable entering their credit card information onto a small site from a business they’re not overly familiar with.

To add additional payment options to your Shopify store, go to your Settings and then find “Payment providers.”

You can quickly activate instant-pay and express checkout options like PayPal and Amazon Pay, along with a number of different alternative payment methods.

Keep It Quick

Simple is the key here, which is why we’ve used this exact word several times so far in this post. You shouldn’t have extensive forms or questionnaires for your customers to fill out; they’ll skip these, and their purchase. Reach out for this information after the sale has been completed.

Express checkouts, as we discussed above, are a solid option that can help with this. In addition to enabling the Express checkouts, you can also enable the ability for customers to create accounts with you. While the first checkout will still require them to enter into all their information, they won’t have to do this again in the future.

You can enable this feature by going to your settings, and then selecting “Checkout.” Enable the ability to create accounts, but keep it optional; 29% of abandoned cartsoccured because people were required to create an account before purchasing, and apparently that 29% did /not/ want to.

It’s also good to note that some themes have express checkout processes already enabled, including the Out Of the Sandbox themes. There are also apps you can use to simplify the checkout process like One-Click Checkout.

Prove It’s Secure

I know I’m not the only one who has been on a small business’s site and felt like I was taking a gamble by entering in my credit card information to complete a purchase.

That is not the feeling you want customers to have when they’re interested in purchasing from you.

Do what you can to put these concerns at ease. Even if it doesn’t speed up the process, it will improve it by instilling confidence and a sense of security. Customers want to know that their information (and their money) is safe. Building trust is important.

Downloading the free McAfee app will not only scan your site for potential threats, but also give you a nice big badge you can display on your site to assuage customer doubt. You can also leverage the information that your business is run on a Shopify store, which is a well-known and well-trusted platform.

Keep Mobile in Mind

Right now, the whole world has gone mobile.

Ok, maybe not the whole world, but a lot of it. Mobile traffic is dominating online traffic, and is occuring in higher percentages than desktop traffic across the board (and multiple industries). Despite this, conversion rates on mobile aren’t happening at the same ratio.

Consider mobile customers when creating your checkout process.

Mobile-oriented checkouts include limited forms and limited graphics or videos. (Believe it or not, a surprising number of sites like to add a lot of both somewhere in the checkout process). Any graphics that you do have should be a JPEG file; this is high enough quality for it to look great, but not so high that it slows down loading times.

Conclusion

You’ve worked hard to get the rest of your site to work flawlessly to get users to find the products they’re looking for, do some research, and add them to the cart. Don’t drop the ball at the very last possible second by having a complicated or glitchy checkout process. Make sure that it’s optimized for all users (mobile and desktop alike) to move through as quickly as possible while giving them all the information they need. The steps above can help you improve the checkout process for your Shopify customers, leaving them with a more positive experience and gaining you more sales. It’s a win-win for everyone.

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