Need To Improve Your Cart & Checkout Conversion?

Want some BIG-bang-for-the-buck optimization wins?

Here are 8+ sure-fire things to look at in your shopping cart/checkout area. You’re probably doing most of them right, but even just one small tweak will often help you increase your conversion and more importantly, your revenues.

MOBILE CARTS AND CHECKOUTS

This one is first because it’s a BIGGIE.

Mobile shoppers behave differently from desktop customers. One of the most prevalent eCommerce issues today is that many carts and checkouts are still built for desktop and then just minimized (responsivized?) for mobile. Even marketers who deep-think the mobile experience often make too many allowances in their carts and checkouts. Plus, things like new payment methods, shipping tables, and customer service/legalese vomit get added after launch without close inspection and/or proper testing.

Your desktop carts and checkouts should be optimized for computer screens. Your mobile carts and checkouts need to be optimized for handheld devices/screens. Full stop. Yes, people scroll. Yes, in the checkout, your brain behaves differently. That’s why it’s best to keep cart/checkout-related things to 1-2 screens when you can. Certainly, not eleventy bazillion scrolls with huge performance lags because of all the 3^rd party extensions I saw on {NAME REDACTED} this morning.

If you are using a software package that allows you one responsive/mobile-ready version of your cart/checkout, you need to think mobile first. If you are asking: “What if I have 75% desktop traffic, surely I don’t need to do it mobile-first?” I’d still recommend that you look at it mobile first and then build up. If nothing else, you’ll tighten up the desktop experience and pay more attention to your calls to action. It will also force you to look at how much space your header and footer take up and whether the special messaging you need in that area is front-and-center. Plus, the search engines evaluate based on your mobile performance, not your desktop performance. (And for the members of the peanut gallery who will send snarky comments about checkouts having a different layer of security, I understand AND they are still evaluated.)

Takeaway: Think mobile first when it comes to carts and checkouts. If you don’t do a huge amount of business mobile-wise, it’s still advisable to take into consideration how it looks/works on a handheld device. This ensures you only ask for the information that must be asked; have clear CTAs (call-to-actions); and use your space most effectively. It also tends to effectively highlight the brand and decrease all the redundant and unnecessary messaging that runs rampant on today’s sites. Additionally, it’s important to run your accessibility checkers on all cart and checkout versions (mobile, desktop, and tablet.)

 

PROMO, OFFER, DISCOUNT AND COUPON CODES, OH MY!

Special offers with deadlines create urgency and cause people to focus. This is a good thing.

Deals with AOV (Average Order Value) thresholds higher than your normal AOV get a percentage of your visitors to order more stuff. This is another good thing.

Clear and conspicuous places to insert deal/offer/discount/promo/coupon codes so users don’t have to search for them? This can be a good thing AND it can be the kiss of death when it comes to conversion if you’re not careful.

Two of the most frequently abandoned areas in cart/checkout are the shipping area and the promo code area. Where the promo code capture is located on the page/screen and whether it’s open or closed (in other words, a line, or its own box) make a material difference in its use and success. The general rule of thumb is that the more apparent/obvious the promo code box is in your checkout, the more people will use it. (In other breaking news, water is wet.)

If your promo codes are easy to find — dynamic, in the eyebrow, pre-filled, or in a promo hopper – visitors are less likely to end up leaving your site to find one that suits them. If the user is a discount shopper and your codes are not easy to find, the user will look for them. This is a much different experience on the desktop versus a handheld. (It’s often quite awful on a mobile device.) More importantly, how/where they find the codes impacts whether they come back to your site and finish the transaction; come back to your site and subsequently bail because the codes they find don’t work; or just bail in general because they get distracted, find a competitor with a better/cheaper product or something else altogether. It’s important to note that not everyone is a discount shopper and not everyone uses coupon codes. However, there are discount shoppers and promo code users in every category from budget to ultra-luxury. (As an aside, you should track your take rate.)

Takeaway: Test where, when, and how you show your promo captures. Test against your control process at least a couple of times a year and always after making changes to your cart/checkout. Using artificial intelligence in the cart/checkout can help with a lot of things. Optimizing your cart/checkout, and specifically, promo codes is one of the biggest.

If you find that you’re having trouble getting your carters to stay on page – in other words, you have folks who leave to find a promo code before they proceed – you may want to consider a promo hopper. A promo hopper is typically a modal/pop-up that gives people all the promo codes that they qualify for. It doesn’t work as well as just blanketing the biggest, most appropriate, universal discount into your users’ carts but, depending on the offers that you showcase, it can increase your average order value and doesn’t kill your margin. Promo hoppers tend to work best if they feature 3-4 offers with 2-3 of them being offers that have requirements at least 10% over the cart value.

If you use any kind of deal codes in your business, you should work the coupon sites and apps, the couponminders, and your paid and organic listings to ensure that people looking for coupons come to you first. If/when they end up at other sites looking for your deal codes, they find ones that work. You should also review which of your competitors are advertising on your coupons as well as any opportunities you may have to steal/own theirs. And lastly, if you don’t have a page on your site and listing(s) in your internal text search about your promo codes, this is something worth developing and testing. They’re both great for traffic.

Be sure to assign someone(s) to keep on top of your promo codes/coupons and their expiration dates, especially in your triggers and SMS. I recommend swapping them out frequently, but many companies just leave them open for extended periods. (This is what the couponminders and apps usually pick up.) If you do that, you still want to keep on top of the expirations. Companies often lose ~15% of their abandoned cart revenue from expired and faulty coupons. Faulty coupons are coupons that the user can’t read/understand/decipher (Os and 0s, for example) and/or have too many digits.

 

SHIPPING AND HANDLING

In measured usability testing, one of the things you notice about shipping — in real-time and then again in exit interviews – is that even though most people do indeed hate paying freight and handling costs, they are expecting them.

So, why do so many people bail in shipping? Many reasons, but there are a couple of big ones. First, the costs are too high compared to their expectations. Say you’re buying a boxed set of DVDs as a gift (who even still has a DVD player?!?) The set costs $120. How much do you expect to pay for shipping? If you ask 100 people this question, the majority will say eight to ten bucks. This aligns with the fact that if a user checks out and the shipping is $10 or close-ish to $10, they don’t usually bail on shipping. (If you know anything about how much third-party fraud there is on DVDs, you’ll feel better about purchasing from a reputable company than, say, on a dastardly marketplace that is rampant with DVD fraud.)

What happens though if the user sees that, because of the way shipping is calculated, they’ll need to pay 20% of the $120 selling price. Are they willing to pay $24 to get the DVDs? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Considering how many companies I have worked with that sell DVDs and other media, I can tell you that the answer is far more likely to swing to a HARD NO. Less than a quarter of users will look for a shipping offer (promo code, deal, coupon, discount, whatever.) Most just bail. (Less than half of a percent of the people try to game the system and ship to another address – like a work address — that may be cheaper. Interestingly, studies show that site visitors are more apt to change their address to get it faster than they are to get it cheaper.)

Second, unexpected costs that weren’t addressed on your PDPs (product detail pages.) This includes mandatory add-on costs, oversize charges, rush shipping fees that weren’t previously addressed (this happens a lot in food, for example), and so on. Companies can get people over the shipping hurdle but it’s more difficult to get people over what they say are “bait and switch marketing tactics.”

Long story long, is that there aren’t many choices around shipping fees. Carters get to the shipping part of checkout and they either stay or go. If you’re tracking it (please tell me that you’re tracking it) you know where, when, and why people bail, and you can do something about it immediately or in your future remarketing and retargeting efforts.

If your carters are not leaving in the active shipping area (calculating/viewing the fees) but they’re leaving around the shipping area, you should figure out why. Is there a performance lag in the shipping area? Perhaps when they use your shipping estimator? Does their address or zip code create error messaging that they don’t know how to handle or work through/around? Are your shipping tables too complicated? Is your oversize messaging off? Are you showing new/unexpected delivery time information when the estimated fees are presented? Whatever it may be, this is an excellent place to pinpoint where your users are struggling and how/what you can do to improve it.

Takeaway: Make sure your shipping calculators work on all browsers and there’s not a lot of lag time while the fees are calculated in the background. Lag time and poor error handling are both very problematic and account for a significant number of exits. Precisely target EXACTLY where your carters are struggling, determine how you can best help them, and then fix it. Notate the abandoned point so that if it is in the shipping area you can email/show them a shipping offer if/when you have one. If you’ll never have a shipping offer, that’s okay too. You can still use your trigger emails, SMS, retargeting banners, and so on to address it and/or promote your benefits. (For example: your order is handled with special care yada yada yada.) Learn how to best use availability and urgency messaging near your shipping information to remind the user that they’ll get their order quickly. When you’re able, test dynamic shipping fees. As an aside, if you haven’t tested $.99 (or whatever) opt-in/out package insurance, it’s worth looking into.

 

AVAILABILITY MESSAGING

For years, availability messaging has been a secret weapon in marketers’ conversion arsenals. With the, er, events of the past couple of years, it’s become even more powerful for users and traffic drivers.

Availability messaging alerts the user as to when they will get your product. When companies test it, dynamic messaging is by far, the biggest winner. Dynamic messaging typically indicates the quantity left (if it’s worth talking about) and when the user will receive it. So, for example, “Order soon! Only 13 left! Free delivery on Monday, May 18^th.”  

If that’s not available to you, something is better than nothing. Examples of something? In stock, ships today! Available now! Only 8 left, order today! Order by 5 ET and your order ships today!

Takeaway: Availability messaging creates urgency, and it sets the user’s expectations of when/how they will receive the goods. It works best near the product title and/or the add-to-cart button. If it’s one of your unique selling points, don’t be afraid to call it out elsewhere too. If you have restrictions regarding availability (in other words, limiting how many people can buy), do them on the product detail pages before they get to the cart. You can also test this as a pop/modal after a PDP add/entry. (Pops/modals often work best but it’s likely to be a short-term win because of how punitive elements with friction are becoming to the search engines.)

 

ALTERNATIVE PAYMENT METHODS

You know that old saying “too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth?” The same thing goes for payment methods. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a BIG fan of offering alternatives and for the many companies who test it, there tends to be a sweet spot in the number of payment methods you can offer before your conversion tanks. (Yes, tanks is the right word for it.) This happens especially when you offer pay-in-installments and credit terms. These can work like gangbusters and a. they’re not for everyone, b. they tend to impact what else you can/should offer. Plus, it’s important not to let the pay-in-installments messaging and icons run amok.

Takeaway: If you find that people are bailing in the payment section, look at which payment methods you are offering; the order you’re offering them; and how your visitors are interacting with them. (Some of the alternative payment methods have very cutesy names and equally confusing pitches/guidelines.) Be sure to look at what’s working for mobile vs what’s working for desktop. The companies who’ve mastered the whole payment area tend to have different offerings on mobile.

The order in which you default your payment methods is important as is the size/space you allocate to them. This includes all ways to pay including gift certificates/cards, payment plans, credit cards, paying with points, and so on. The entire selection should take up less than 75% of a mobile screen. If you’re running over that, you should look at your presentation. Speaking of presentation, prioritizing the payments in the order which customers use them can increase conversion. So can little things like using the credit card icons instead of just the words. You should also review the location and frequency of your privacy/security statements near your payment methods.

 

MANDATORY ACCOUNT CREATION

Mandatory account creation = 0 out of 5 stars. Will not come again.

That’s typically how users feel when you require them to create an account before placing an order. And even if you feel your customers will get over it, know that the search engines, don’t. They hate it more than users. Getting dumped into Google’s penalty box is something out of Sartre’s Huis Clos or Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day.

And for those sneaky peeps reading this, requiring folks to develop usernames and passwords before continuing with checkout counts as account creation. You can go directly to jail without collecting your $200 along with whoever started this new thing of burying guest checkout as a one-liner. If you must do these kinds of shenanigans, save them for a thank you landing page AFTER you get the order.

Are there exceptions to this rule? Sort of. Some business-to-business companies and some restricted goods players have no choice but to verify identity before getting an order. If that’s you, you have a hall pass on this issue. ONLY this issue.

Takeaway: Offer a guest checkout that’s easy to find and use. Make it obvious. Track the take rate. (Depending on how many people use it, you may need to allocate more space/attention to it.)

 

REQUIRED QUESTIONS IN THE CART

To this day, too many companies still ask informational questions in the cart/checkout that they require people to answer before placing their orders. Things like “where did you hear about us?” and “which catalog are you ordering from?” If you want to ask questions like that, do it after the order. And for the love of all things holy, please don’t use huge dropdowns with eleventy bazillion choices in no logical order, especially on mobile. It’s 2022, you don’t need to list every single influencer’s name in a choice box.

Takeaway: Keep your cart and checkout areas tight so the users can go through your ordering process quickly and easily, without a lot of distractions.

 

EMAIL ADDRESS CAPTURE

It blows my mind how many companies still ask for a name and address first before collecting their carter’s email addresses. Ask for email address first and do whatever it takes to capture it for your records. (Scraping, tagging, server calls, etc.)

Takeaway: If you already have a user’s email address, you can fill it in. (They can change it if they’d like.) If you don’t though, be sure to ask for it upfront so if they abandon, you’ll still be able to target them with your remarketing and retargeting. If you have a text marketing program and all the associated legalese in order, asking for a mobile number is acceptable too.

 

DELETE/TRASH

If you’re using delete in your cart/checkout, it’s wise to test the placement and whether it should be a separate element (i.e., a trash can icon) or within the quantity box.

You’ll also want to look at your delete confirmation process if you use one. A lot of times, companies use these as pop-ups that create problems, especially on handheld devices. If you’re using any sort of pop/modal, test it exhaustively.

Takeaway: Even though things like changing/deleting items don’t get much press, they’re still important as they often impact the people with the highest propensity to purchase QUICKLY. Test out your process exhaustively to ensure that it works the way it should. Noticeable lag times can negatively impact conversion, especially in this area so keep track of how long it takes to delete/change something.

 

A FEW OTHER HELPFUL HINTS

Please make sure that you run each one of your pages through an accessibility checker. Yes, even if your consultant, vendor, grandmother, and fairy godmother told you that you don’t have to. This will spot-check things like whether your pages are properly tagged for assistive technology; have proper orientation and page titles; your buttons are labeled accurately; there’s proper display scaling; collapsed states are represented in the code; and so on. Accessibility often gets a bad rap as it’s never-ending. However, it’s the right thing to do for your users, it’s good for SEO and it’s much easier than consultants make it out to be. There are free accessibility checkers that will tell you exactly what to do. Remember, progress counts so start working on just one page or one overall task and keep building on your success.

Timing is everything. It’s critical that you spend time optimizing your cart and checkout so that it’s as fast as possible. (This is straight-up a human brain thing, not a personal anecdote.) Time your process on a phone with a 3G connection. (Yes, use 3G even if you have something better available.) Time it from the minute the item is put into the cart till the final THANK YOU FOR YOUR ORDER confirmation page. Make a notation of how long each step takes. When you’re doing this, use new test info (a random address in a different state that you haven’t used before, for example.)

If you’re using a multi-step checkout process, please consider a temperature bar (aka progress bar) at the top. Just something that lets the visitor know where they are in the process and how much further they have left to go. If you have more than one step, you should be using an indicator. (They’re especially useful for multi-step carts targeted to direct/branded traffic.) And for the record, multi-step carts aren’t a bad thing. For many companies, especially legacy gift companies, catalogers, and traditional direct marketers, they perform better than one-step checkouts. The key is to know who should get them and who shouldn’t. Some of the biggest, most popular software vendors now offer only a one-page solution. If you’re forced into that, just make sure you capture the email address first and have a robust remarketing program. (Retargeting helps too.)

Show thumbnails (pictures) of your product(s) in the cart. If you decide to take them out, test against it, don’t just rip them out. Too many companies are deleting them in cart/checkout for “speed considerations.” I’m as obsessed as they come with speed and performance and still, removing pictures is one of the last things I’d do. Want to optimize them within an inch of your life? Go wild. But don’t just delete them without thoroughly testing eliminating them first.

When used properly, using Live Chat in your cart/checkout can be uber helpful. The positioning of it is what’s important though. Instead of just blanketing your cart/checkout with icons, you should identify where people struggle most and test whether it works there or not. Too many people are using cheap software with oodles of pops that come up in all the wrong places at all the wrong times and negatively impact conversion. Make sure you test your experience separately on desktop, tablet, and mobile. Determine how it impacts your speed/performance. Review how you use user-initiated versus instigated.

Be upfront BEFORE the checkout about things like availability issues, warranty/guarantee limitations, exceptions, and so on. I know. I know. It’s very tempting to take the order and then tell people the bad news after but so many companies have abused this the past couple of years, it mostly just backfires now. It still works up till checkout (meaning to and/in the cart) but it’s not always advisable. If you do this, make sure you have solid trigger/SMS programs.

Text exit pops. While these are not for everyone, they are worth testing. (I’m saying this knowing that friction is rapidly becoming the root of all evil from a search engine perspective.) They can work like gangbusters. And in the interest of transparency, they work best if you can solve the problem. Visitor X says they would have bought if you had given them a discount, so you give them a small discount or another incentive to place their order. Visitor Y says that they would have purchased if they understood your return policy. You have someone on hand to answer their questions and/or automated verbiage about your return policy. Etc.

Social icons are not for your cart/checkout. Test this as you wish or just skip to the end of the book and dump them on your thank you page instead. Eliminate distractions wherever you can.

Use big action directives and use them generously. Make sure that it’s clear what the user needs to do to get to the next step. If you’re locking your next step action directives at the bottom of your pages, please make sure there is enough clearance that the user doesn’t miss the action overlay. (This is a problem on a lot of major retailers’ sites.)

Don’t delete your carts. Keep them till the user buys or dies. And in B2B, don’t delete them if someone dies either. I know that sounds cheeky, but you can convert carts long after you think you can as long as the information is available. For those who will immediately ask “what happens with seasonal inventory or things we’ll never sell?” Tell the users that the item(s) are out of stock and offer alternatives. This takes testing to get right but it almost always works.

Have questions about your carts and checkouts? Have a tip you’d like to share? Tweet @amyafrica or write info@eightbyeight.com.