Tag Archive for: ux

What is checkout friction?

Checkout friction is anything that stands between your customer wanting a product and being able to purchase it. This includes things that slow down the process, including typos, slow loading pages, pop up ads, sign up processes or even things that stop the purchase altogether, such as an outdated link on a “buy now” button.

Checkout friction is the largest cause of cart abandonment rates; even higher than hidden shipping costs, complicated return policies and security concerns.

How can I decrease the amount of checkout friction on my website?

For larger merchants:

  1. Flexibility: allow customers to pay via mobile apps and mobile optimised sites.
  2. Offer a better customer User Experience (UX): this may mean using autofill APIs to remember customer information, or making the payments process as easy to navigate as possible. A better UX could potentially yield a 400% increase in conversion rates.
    Examples include;

    • Personalised payment process: This might mean keeping the colour, design, and font the same throughout your website. By keeping your payments pages synonymous with the theme of the website, an increased sense of cohesion is created.
    • Reduce checkout time: The Checkout Conversion Index found that the optimal time for checkout success is 134 seconds, with the worst performing sites needing 220 seconds. A way to reduce time taken to checkout is by integrating your payment gateway’s interface directly into your website instead of using a payment redirect page, which means customers no longer need to wait for a pop up to load.

For smaller merchants:

  1. Fewer info fields: More successful merchants ask for as little information from consumers as possible, whether that mean payments information, address fields or even registering for an online account.
  2. Slim your checkout process: Amazon’s patented “one click checkout” is a great example of reducing checkout friction. By allowing consumers to make a purchase through a single click, Amazon’s sales have increased by 5% each year. Instead of offering four or five different pages for consumers to click through as they attempt to pay, a single page interface that provides all the information (including what’s in the cart, the price etc.) drastically reduces checkout friction.
  3. Offer more payment methods: By accepting a variety of payment methods such as credit and debit cards, as well as alternate payment methods such as Afterpay, PayPal and zipMoney, the number of decision points for customers is reduced which maximises conversion rates. On average, better performing sites offer 6.8 payment methods versus 4 for underperformers.

How can Paydock help?

Paydock’s developer friendly REST API makes payment method integration easier. Our clients are able to drive greater conversions with no redirection and offer an optimised customer payments experience.

According to Statista, the global average cart abandonment rate for the second quarter of 2016 was 74.52%. This means that out of 100 potential customers, 75 are leaving for reasons such as “extra costs too high”, “the site wanted me to create an account” and a “too long/ complicated checkout process”. Yet, the high cart abandonment rate is no cause for despair. Approximately 63% of abandoned sales is potentially recoverable by savvy online retailers.

 

So how can merchants reduce the cart abandonment rate?

  1. Offer free shipping. Savvy online consumers are looking for ways to save money. If you are unable to offer free shipping completely, promotions such as “Free shipping for orders over $75” or even making shipping costs clear and upfront have been shown to increase sales.
  2. Create a guest checkout process. Shoppers are reluctant to provide private information upfront, but are happy to create an account after they have purchased a product to track shipping and delivery times.
  3. Reduce the amount of steps taken to checkout. Conversion studies have shown that the less clicks to checkout there are, the lower the cart abandonment rate. If many pages are needed, it is a good idea to provide a progress bar or another visual indicator.
  4. Improving the security of transactions. Adding a security logo such as Symantec can increase sales by up to 42%
  5. Increasing the amount of payment methods. Offer common payment processes such as PayPal, VISA, MasterCard, AMEX, as well as alternate payment methods (APM). APMs (such as E-wallets and mobile payment methods, transfers, digital currencies etc.) will account for more than half of all transactions by 2017, up from 43% in 2012. In a time where payment methods are becoming increasingly varied and complex, online merchants risk losing sales if they are unable to offer their customer’s preferred method.

 

How can Paydock help?

We aren’t saying that we can offer all solutions to high cart abandonment rates, but Paydock can definitely increase conversion rates by connecting your e-commerce store to multiple payment gateways and allowing access to new payment methods. We allow you to future proof your payments ecosystem in a time of rapid change and development.  

So yeah,

We’re pretty fixated on delivering a platform that builds ever more value into your payments experience.

‘Geneva’ is no exception, but we’ll let the release speak for itself – see below.

As always, we’re here for you,

The Paydock team

API Release (v1.1.9)

Web Client Release (v1.0.4)

Updates:

  • Quickly see what Gateway is currently in-use for any Subscription on the Subscriptions page
  • Easy sort-by headings to order Subscription information
  • Archive transactions
  • Delete customers
  • Create Refund Notifications

Read more