Once you’ve gotten a shopper to add a product or two to their cart, you have a reasonable chance of converting them into a buyer. The process of moving them from the cart or basket page through the checkout steps to the final receipt page is known as the checkout process. There are a number of usability best practices for checkout screens. We recently performed a cleanup of the checkout screens for one of our clients that followed these guidelines, and I want to present some of these ideas with screenshots from the redesign. Read on to find out what we did and the results we’ve seen.
Provide “Breadcrumbs”
Many shopping carts don’t provide a single-page checkout, and the jury is still out on whether they are more user-friendly than checkout processes that span multiple pages. If your checkout process includes more than one page, make it simpler by reminding your customer where they are in the overall process with a clear graphic. Think of it as the sign near the entrance to your local shopping mall with the “You are Here” pointer, except it’s a map for your website. As an added bonus, you can also reinforce the concept of security with your choice of words and graphics in the image.
Ask for as Much Information as You Need…
…but not a single field more. A customer’s sense of dread increases dramatically with every field you add to a form on a page. For some, it’s just a matter of the time it takes to type in all their information; for others, their worry about identity theft and fraud grows with each piece of information they need to provide. Even if your shopping cart software has a default field, you likely don’t need to use it. For example, if you don’t use a customer’s fax number for anything, why ask for it? Most e-commerce communications are handled by email and phone, not fax, so many companies can omit this field. If you only ship within your own country, don’t ask customers to choose a country. Simply put a small statement at the bottom that reminds people of your policy, instead of a dropdown with a single country in it. (Or even worse, a dropdown filled with countries that generate an error when the form is submitted!)
Required and Optional Fields
A corollary to the above rule: don’t make a field required unless it needs to be. Visually, the customer address forms need to have an indicator that shows which fields are required and which ones are optional, and they need to align well vertically. The most common indicator is an asterisk. However, if every field is required, don’t put an asterisk by each one. A single statement at the top that says “All fields are required” will suffice and clear some of the visual clutter – and customer confusion over why every field has the asterisk.
Scrub Addresses
Scrubbing addresses is becoming more widespread on e-commerce sites. The idea is that there’s a layer of technology on the back-end that takes the addresses (especially the shipping address) and compares it against a known set of addresses, such as the US Postal Service address database, and returns a scrubbed address – one that has been verified as a real address, and formatted according to carrier preferences.
This concept has a number of benefits. First, it can reduce address-correction fees with your shipping carriers (UPS, FedEx, and the postal service). Second, it can reduce costs associated with returned packages due to undeliverable addresses. Third, it can improve the accuracy of sales tax calculations in destination-based tax states. The USPS provides this service, but under very limited circumstances (for example, you must be an active USPS shipper). Our own AccurateTax service offers address scrubbing as a stand-alone service or as part of our sales tax solutions. And there are other options for various carts.
Use Trust Marks
Recognized trust marks are a simple way to remind customers of the protection you place on their personal information and payment details. Trust marks come in a variety of forms. The simplest one to include, that usually doesn’t add any additional cost to your overhead, is the security badge offered as part of your SSL certificate. All of the major SSL certificate providers offer such badges – you’ve likely seen Verisign, GeoTrust, Thawte, and other security badges on major e-commerce sites.
A second form of trust marks includes those from companies that scan your site for security holes and PCI violations. These became well-known several years ago when the HackerSafe logo become prominent, and MarketingSherpa reported amazing increases in conversion rates for PetCo when displaying the logo in the site’s header. Today, HackerSafe has become McafeeSecure and is still a leader in this type of service. While the McafeeSecure logo can still be seen on many e-commerce sites, they’ve been joined by a number of competitors, including ControlScan.
On checkout pages, particularly the page where customers enter their credit card details, it’s especially important to show it high on the page. On our redesign, we grouped the trust marks into a bar along with the customer service phone number and provided it near the top of every page in the checkout process for consistency.
We’ll be exploring other trust marks in an upcoming article.
Indicate Processing and Shipping Times
Customers want to know when they will receive their order. In most cases, this depends on two factors:
- Processing time: how long it takes your warehouse to pack the order for shipment, and
- Shipping time: how long it takes the package to reach the destination.
Explain both to the customer as early as possible in the checkout process, and repeat the information as needed and in the confirmation email.
Provide a Printable Receipt
A printable invoice or receipt is necessary because a) emails don’t always reach their destination, and b) customers don’t always remember their orders. Offering customers the ability to print a black-and-white, bare bones receipt once their order is complete allows them to get hard copy proof that they did indeed order X, Y, and Z from you. It also helps them find discrepancies and call to have them corrected earlier in the process.
Send an Automatic Receipt by Email
You should automatically send a receipt by email immediately after the order is placed. Some customers won’t use the printable receipt, but will expect the emailed receipt to arrive in their inbox within a minute or two of the order being completed. The email should provide a copy of the billing and shipping addresses, the cart contents (including any discounts, tax, and shipping charges), and a phone number to call in case of errors. If you can’t send out an email immediately, state the expected delay time boldly somewhere on your web-based receipt page.
Use the Receipt Page for Merchandising and Engagement
The receipt page is an often-overlooked place to ask the customer for additional sales, feedback, and participation. Here are a few ideas to include on your receipt page:
- Link to your Facebook page
- Link to your Twitter account
- A form to sign up for your email newsletter or paper catalog
- The chance to add a popular accessory to their order
- An offer to upgrade their shipping for a special price
What about you?
Have you tried any of these already on your site or your customers’ stores? What kind of difference did you see? In our particular case, we’ve noted a 1.5% improvement in conversion rates inside the funnel since implementing many of these changes, and we still have two pages left to tackle (the login page and the receipt page) – not to mention the receipt email itself! Leave your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
[email protected] Forex Robot says
I like the breadcrumb idea. I’m going to have to start implementing that into my current checkout.
Jacob says
Great article, great advice. You raise some really good points and increasing conversions. This is what usability testing is all about!
Josh says
Thank you for the excellent article I will keep these ideas in mind with future checkout redesigns.
Martyn @ D2P says
Some good points but I think it’s also important to mention you dont need many trust marks as sometimes I find it off putting.
Robert Brady says
Solid points that a majority of online forms don’t follow.
Redspell says
Your suggestions are top quality, the best has to be the single page checkout. So many ecommerce stores make you trawl through so many pages just to purchase a $2.00 item.
SEO says
Nice suggestions for checkout process.
I liked the most are:
1. Breadcrumbs for Checkout
2. Processing and Shipping Times
Laptop Carrying Case says
All very good tips. I definitely agree that you need to simplify the checkout process as much as possible. You don’t want to lose sales as a result of asking for too much extra customer information or making other similar mistakes. I am going to reanalyze our website’s checkout process to see if we can apply any of these tips.
Laptop Carrying Case says
I don’t know if I would recommend the address scrubbing though. When trying to verify addresses through automated software, it is easy to run into problems. People enter addresses in a variety of ways, but shipping to wrong addresses is not a big problem. I could see this being more frustrating for customers and lowering conversion rates.
beach clog says
I’ll implement Breadcrumbs for Checkout
and Processing and Shipping Times on my next project
Talking Ava says
Great tips! I’ve been reading up on several suggestions on improving my checkout process, and this has got to be one of the more enlightening ones! Thanks for this!
Blooming Artificial says
I have implemented all these on my site except Checkout Breadcrumbs, i missed this one.
mike says
Hey, great information.
I’m definitely going to implement some of these tips on my site. Especially adding shipping times.
thanks.
migraine causes says
I will embed Breadcrumbs looks like a good idea for me.
Water Filtration says
Good written post about improve checkout method. I newbie in ecommerce site, this information really helpful for me. Thanks.
used tires says
Yea, the checkout process is very important. I find the checkout process at Amazon is quite good and a nice example for many sites to follow.
Till then,
Jean
bangladesh ecommerce says
Nice post!
Customer’s security should be one of the prime concerns of any online vendor.
Gesture!
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Bitkisel Tedavi says
Solid points that a majority of online forms don’t follow.
Banner Design says
A really informative article. The checkout phase over the net is very important indeed because many people could even place orders for the products to purchase but may stop finalizing the deals for a number of reasons.
I believe installing the SSL scripts on websites and simplifying the whole process could also be nice to mention in this respect.
Joseph A'Deo says
Thanks for the note about trust marks! And even sites that don’t need ssl — ones that, for example, use a third-party shopping cart — can now get one of these with the VeriSign Trust Seal, which also provides daily malware scanning for the sites in question. Otherwise, you’d of course want both a trust mark and encryption of some kind — ssl or EV SSL. Feel free to shoot me any questions about VeriSign’s trust marks as well, at [email protected].
Umbro England says
I’ve switched to paypal pro this weekend, to hopefully help convert more sales with a seamless checkout process. I’d like to bring up the topic again about the need to provide more information and clearer directions in the shopify controlled checkout process so customers understand what the direct checkout buttons like “pay with paypal” do, and that filling out the form below them will allow them to checkout on-site with their credit card. I know there are requirements from paypal on showing the button.
cheap college books says
The bread crumb idea is great i need to find a way to implement it.
Harvey @ PS3 says
I like the idea of scrubbing addresses. Will need to find one for the UK. Got any ideas on where to find a list for the UK?
Catering says
Good tips about check-out process. Customer don’t like lengthy process. Optional fields are really good for usability.
car battery starter says
I have to say I start getting a bit suspicious also when the number of information fields goes up. My e-mail and phone number along with the the address is all they should be needing so when they ask for more info, it raises a flag.
Filter Coffee says
This is a really excellent read for me. Must admit that you are one of the best bloggers I ever saw. You raise some really good points and increasing conversions. This is what usability testing is all about! keep it up.
Printable Coupons says
I help my father run his ecommerce site. Its really just a product he sells that I set up a site for. It was a huge learning curve trying to set one up. I did it with wordpress and a plugin. It definitely doesn’t look as professional as all the options you have here. I’ll have to see what we can install on our site as we look pretty amateurish compared to this.
DNS Server Hosting says
The breadcrumb idea is right. I am a frequent online shopper, and I get annoyed when I don’t know how long before I am done placing my order. The easier my process is, then the more likely I am to return to site for another order.
Komodo Dragon says
I’m not too sure about address scrubbing as well. It seems like despite it being possible for human error to creep in occasionally, it’s still by and large more accurate a process for listing address. Especially the more unique addresses that might not exist in databases.
Giovanni Adcock says
Grand poteau peut I à traduire Tchèque pour mon blogs visionneuses ? Merci
Susan Petracco says
Giovanni – Yes you may, as long as you link back to the original source (here on my blog). Thanks for asking.
Veronica [email protected] beach fl waterfront condos says
Hi Susan. These are some good tips you provided here. Each and every tip is essential. However, not many e-commerce sites are practicing them. There are people who put things in their cart with the intent to buy, but due to poor navigation and search and some other complexities, these potential sales are lost. I think it’s really important to make them feel that once they have the item in the cart, they already have obtained the item. Complexities tend to take this feeling away from them.