The Covid-19 pandemic generated an unprecedented shift towards online amongst retailers, regardless of the industry. More and more online businesses are seeking website improvements, striving to offer a seamless shopping experience and increase their selling performance. SEO expert at UENI, Jos Davies, outlines 7 effective ways to increase your conversions by improving your checkout page, turning new customers into regular shoppers.

1) Experiment with a single-page checkout

While multi-page checkout requires the necessary information to be completed in stages, a single-page checkout does it in just one click. Running split testing helps to understand your customers' psychology and behaviour. Some might feel the required info is less overwhelming if spread across multiple pages, others on the contrary - thinking a single page offers more control over reviewing their purchase info upon completion.

2) Skip mandatory sign ups

Mandatory sign-ups account for 34% of cart abandonment cases - a legitimately frustrating request, especially amongst first-time or new shoppers. Compelling buyers to create an account might help expand your email subscription list, but to what cost?

Assess your gains and losses and think of alternative ways to create a smooth shopping experience. Guest checkout, optional or automatic registration, log-in via social accounts, or sign-up invitation after the order placement are good alternatives. They will help improve conversions and the UX, increasing the chances for account creation at a later stage.

3) Market free shipping, free returns and secure gateways

Customers hesitate in giving their credit card information when ordering from a new website. To curve their apprehension, grant their trust by placing no additional costs. A study shows that close to 80% of its respondents are more likely to place an order with free shipping included - precisely the rationale behind Amazon Prime’s success, with 142M domestic consumers, that shows how appealing free delivery is to online buyers.

4) Quick and easy form fill outs

An untidy checkout form, cluttered with unnecessary fields, generates confusion and a lack of trust amongst your customers. To prevent them from bouncing-off without placing an order, you need to make sure your fill-outs have a user-friendly design. 55% of shoppers abandon a cart simply because the same information is requested twice. Spare them of repetition, and compress the fields as much as possible: use an auto-complete address form, add a tick box for the same billing address, use a single full name field, etc.

5) Optimise your shopping cart

Shopping cart features and the way users interact with them is what the shopping experience is all about. To offer a flawless UX for all customer types you need to anticipate their expectations and go the extra mile to make each of them feel special. Best practices include: 

• Offering them the option to buy a product straight away, or add it to the cart and continue browsing
• Updating the basket and making the list of items visible at any stage
• Keeping their shopping cart intact if they abandon the process
• Suggesting related items and add promotions for spending more
  
  

6) Retarget customers

Retargeting is a powerful marketing tool that works simply because it is easier to entice a visitor to buy than win a new customer that is not familiar with your brand. Studies show that 70% of retargeted users are more likely to convert, plus it is less resource-consuming, too.

By adding a JavaScript code to your website, you will be able to follow your visitors’ activity across the internet. Whenever they are searching for related products, you could either serve them an ad or send them an email reminding them of the products they previously visualised.

7) Send shopping cart recovery emails

What if there was a way of bringing back abandonment cart users and persuade them to convert? Using the abandoned cart email marketing technique, you can do just that. These emails are usually sent between 20 minutes to 24 hours after the users give up on purchasing an item after already adding it to the shopping basket. The earlier, the better.

Studies show that the open rate for recovery emails is close to half, although the data varies across industries. Test what works best for you, and adjust your strategy accordingly, coming up with convincing ways for customers to complete their purchase.

This piece was brought to you by the experts at https://ueni.com/en-gb/

For more information please contact monisha@datadial.net