If you have an ecommerce site, you know it is not just enough to get potential customers to visit. The goal is to convert those visits to sales, and there are many ways to make that happen. But in its latest infographic, Vebology looks at ways to optimize your ecommerce checkout forms.
You are probably saying to yourself, if a customer is ready to check out, what difference will the forms make?
The answer is: more than you think.
Cart abandonment is a big problem for online retailers.
Vebology makes some recommendations that will help reduce high abandonment rates. The infographic starts out recommending the ecommerce site operators avoid creating a “forced” account registration process.
Everyone wants to collect customer data, but Vebology recommends you allow customers to make the choice of registering after they check out and not before. If the checkout experience is good, the vast majority of customers will create an account without being compelled.
The next suggestion makes a lot of sense because no one wants to fill out extended forms to buy something, whether it is $5 or $1,000. Vebology suggests you keep any form a customer must fill out prior to purchase “compact” with “only the necessary information.” People are busy, and a compact form with just the essentials makes the process that much faster.
Other recommendations Vebology makes are:
- Make sure the back button is working
- Build trust
- Avoid repetition
- Provide progress indicators
- Get rid of distractions
- Use in-line validation
- Use side by side captions
- Make error message easy to understand
Online retailers face competition from local, national and international companies as well as brick and mortar outlets. If every step of the online shopping experience hasn’t been optimized by simplifying it and making it more enjoyable, the customer will go somewhere else.
Streamlining the ecommerce checkout process is one step in the right direction to make sure they don’t. Check out the full infographic from Vebology here:
Images: Vebology
Aira Bongco
Really interesting to see all the tips in an infographic. I would not have read that much into it if it was in a different format. I think that there are so many things that you can do with a checkout form. Not only can you market in it by referring your customers to certain offers. You can also maximize it by making sure that it is working well.