But worry not! Sometimes a small change in the shopping process can save your income. We have listed 5 good customs (connected mainly, but not limited to design…) that can help you enhance the checkout process and make your customers experience better:

1. Provide good access to your shopping cart at all time

Refrain from experimenting with strange names and unknown icons: if your customers cannot locate the cart easily, they won’t be able to use it properly. This rings true to the main site (a clearly labeled cart at the top navigation bar is a must) and to product sites.

Avoid confusing your customers: use the same name for a cart throughout the site and do not change the icon. Make sure that your customers can access the cart anytime they want and change their order.

 2. Don’t require registration

True, it’s good to have registered and returning customers, but sometimes the very thought of setting up an account scares people away.

Think about providing your customers with an option to complete their order without registering at your store. And then, maybe, once their order is processed, you may ask them to set up an account for the future.

Offer something extra for registered customers, but do not discard those who do binge shopping.

3. Provide a progress indicator

Filling out an online form is rarely synonymous to fun. A good idea to keep the customers’ attention focused is to provide a visual indicator of the whole process. Such an indicator or progress bar gives customers an idea of how far they are from completing their goal.

Keep in mind that clearly labeling all the steps is crucial, “ step 1, step 2 and step 3” won’t cut it. Address data and Credit Card Data are much clearer.

Make it possible for your customers to go back to the previous step – this way they won’t feel trapped.

4. Shorten the whole process

Why is it so easy to spend money at Amazon? Because they have one-click payments. It uses impulsive shopping, a spur-of-the-moment thing. It works.

Think about using a similar solution and give your customers the comfort of quick card payments. 1-Click is patented by Amazon, however it is possible to use a simplified checkout mechanism without legal disputes.

Simple payments as used by Amazon and Nexto. Both require registration, however, as the payment data is entered once, it does not need to be repeated again.

This may be the extra feature available to the registered customers: the ability to shop on a whim in a matter of seconds.

5. Make your cart usable

Imagine your customer made a mistake and instead of placing one item in the cart, they’ve placed ten. Naturally, they should be able to edit out the mistake.

Make you cart customer friendly: let them modify the order, store items on a wishlists, or simply delete an item with one simple button. Don’t force them to enter “0” amount of the said item in order to make it disappear.

Don’t forget about mobile users

Perhaps you’ve read the 5 points and thought: I have it all but my customers still abandon their carts? There may be other things connected with their behavior, but try one more thing. Ask yourself a question: Is it possible to buy something in my e-store using a smartphone?

Analyze the traffic and see how many customers use mobile devices. Perhaps it’s time to adjust some elements of the checkout process to suit smaller resolutions and sun flares?

There are many more elements of mobile payment forms that one needs to take into account when designing. We’ll discuss the matter further in another post, fully dedicated to mobile payments.

If you have any questions or just want to give us a shout you can find us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Good luck!

Ania

Ania is interested in all things design, as well as popular literature and film. She writes about the pretty side of credit cards and e-business. She's also responsible for some neat infographics and spends her free time writing short fantasy stories. An avid reader of graphic novels, she tries in vain to finish one herself. Has a credit card and is not afraid of using it online. Owner of a rather wicked sense of humor.