Make your online shopping experience easier this Christmas and beyond!

With Christmas around the corner and online shoppers across the globe preparing for a shopping spree of epic proportions this holiday season, businesses worldwide are doing their level best to make the online shopping experience much easier for their customers. 

If this year’s Black Friday sales were anything to go by, online shopping patterns are set to increase this holiday season as more customers choose convenience over long lines and overcrowded brick-and-mortar stores.

While most online businesses have devoted many resources to creating fantastic websites and online platforms to showcase their incredible product offerings, many of these businesses neglect to optimise their e-commerce checkout process – which is arguably the most important part of the online shopping experience.

Why is checkout so important?

After navigating through your impressive website and filling up their online shopping cart, your customer faces the final hurdle of checkout – a process that can make or break your e-commerce business. 

A recent study by research institute, Baymard, revealed that seven out of 10 online shoppers abandon their carts at checkout – staggering!

Essentially, 70% of your business is lost at the last step of the online shopping experience, and these losses can prove to have a devastating effect when added up collectively. 

Think about the lost profit and marketing opportunities through these missed sales and how they can negatively impact your future business. How likely are you to return to a platform where you’ve had a negative experience previously?

The main goal of your checkout process is to remove distractions while maintaining trust in the checkout flow process so that the sale can be completed as effortlessly as possible. Successful e-commerce merchants will testify that building trust is at the centre of your customer relationship – how else would you expect your customers to part with their hard-earned money in exchange for products on your online platform?

With a streamlined checkout process in place, you can ensure that your revenue streams are boosted while forging long-lasting customer relationships founded on trust. With that being said, let’s delve into some ways to streamline your e-commerce checkout process and increase your returns this holiday season.

Streamlining your e-commerce checkout process

If you’ve read this far, you’re probably serious about improving the online checkout process on your platform. Before making wholesale changes, however, you must first understand how the online checkout fits into the entire customer journey on your website.

Customers who arrive at your platform should be able to browse your products easily, select the ones they want, and pay for them effortlessly without any confusion. The last part means removing any obstacles that may complicate the checkout process.

Successful e-commerce platforms have a common checkout theme that includes sign-posting all steps in the checkout process using a timeline, an address lookup tool, reviewing and confirming contents in the shopping cart, gathering contact and delivery information, and processing the payment quickly and easily. 

This is a winning formula as it helps customers navigate the checkout process effortlessly while helping them with delivery address information and payment processing.

The checkout process can be further streamlined by having it all on one page so that customers have an overview of the process without having to toggle through multiple pages. A surefire way to boost conversion rates on your platform is to reduce the number of clicks that your customer must make – something that is even more crucial at the checkout stage.

A great way to optimise the checkout process for your regular customers is to use an express checkout option that uses information saved under that customer’s profile – helping to speed up the process and finalise the transaction in as little as one click. 

Efficient checkout processes directly correlate to happy customers who enjoy a positive experience on your platform, which will certainly encourage them to return to your online store for their next purchase.

When considering changes to your checkout system, always approach it from a customer’s perspective and reduce as many non-essential elements as possible for effective optimisation. 

Using website analytics tools is particularly helpful as this will pinpoint exactly where in the checkout process your customers tend to abandon their carts.

Follow up on abandoned carts

No matter how streamlined your checkout process may be, customers will always slip through the cracks and leave you scratching your head, wondering why they abandoned their carts. 

Some customers just choose to browse without any intention of buying straight away, and many like to shop around before committing to a specific online shop – so you have your work cut out trying to fend off your competition.

All is not lost, however, as a customer who showed interest in your platform means they have one foot through the door already. This is where you can exercise your creativity with a well-timed abandoned cart follow-up email with more details about the products in their cart and perhaps an enticing discount offer to reinitiate the process.

This also emphasises the importance of validating a customer’s email address upon registration or during the checkout process, as even the best-crafted email will serve no purpose if the potential customer never sees it due to an incorrect email address being captured.

Your follow-up email should showcase the unique value of your items with vivid product descriptions, customer reviews, and use cases. This is also an opportunity to upsell by advising customers of complementary items in your store that other customers purchased together with that product.

By providing relevant information and unbiased recommendations to your customer, you will surely present your brand favourably and will start to build trust. 

Marketing strategies like offering free shipping for a limited time are also great ways to encourage sales from hesitant buyers who are shopping around – which may lead to customers buying more products too.

The Fetchify difference

As you would have gathered, the checkout process is the most crucial aspect of your online store and having an efficient system in place is certain to boost conversions and your profits. 

This is why inherent features like auto-fill-in forms, postcode lookup and address verification options, easy navigation, and efficient payment systems are essential components for a streamlined checkout experience.

Fetchify is a pioneer in SaaS address validation and customer data validation solutions, and we’ve been helping e-commerce businesses increase their conversion rates and boost their profits for the past 15 years.

We process millions of data transactions daily for thousands of clients, from small e-commerce startups to large household brands such as Heinz and RBS. Our flagship products, Address Auto-Complete and Postcode Lookup, reduce friction on checkouts, leading to increases in conversion rates of up to 40%, and helps reduce failed deliveries by as much as 75%.

We are proud to offer over 30 fit-for-purpose plug-and-play integrations with search algorithms that are twice as fast as our competitors. We enjoy global coverage in over 250 countries, with businesses from various industries benefiting from our bespoke offering.

If you’re looking to boost conversion rates, eliminate failed deliveries, minimise human errors, and provide a seamless experience for customers on your platform, then look no further than the experts in data validation and address finder solutions – Fetchify.

The best part is you can try out our Free Trial before committing to our services. Our excellent technical and customer support team is on hand to answer your burning questions. Make sure to Get in Touch and experience the Fetchify difference – like thousands of e-commerce businesses around the globe!