In the past, shopping and payment meant going out, browsing stores, trying products on if necessary, and paying in the store. Technological developments over the last 10 years, and the effect of the pandemic over the last year, have accelerated this further and made online shopping an important part of our lives.
As people can reach products sold anywhere in the world and pay easily, national borders have disappeared and the world has become a global market.
Businesses are now developing systems aimed at removing the barriers of traditional commerce and are adopting a global mindset. E-commerce, which is becoming increasingly widespread around the world, is becoming more important day by day.
On e-commerce sites, the checkout page is the point where a purchase is completed. A visitor to an e-commerce site is a potential customer for that site. If the customer likes a product on the site and adds it to the cart, the first step toward buying from your site has been taken. If they have added to the cart and clicked the buy button, the visitor is ready to buy.
At this point, it is very important that the checkout page is fast and easy to use. Research shows that the cart abandonment rate is very high on checkout pages. For this reason, improving checkout pages on e-commerce sites is important.
The following points should be considered when designing checkout pages.
- Design to accept payments from all cards: This is an overlooked issue for many websites. As a result, some cardholders have to abandon their purchases because they cannot pay. For example, American Express cards have a 4-digit CVV and a 15-digit card number. If the checkout page, with general usage in mind, requires a 16-digit card number or a 3-digit CVV, American Express cardholders will not be able to complete their payments.
- Placement of payment buttons: It is very important that visitors can see the button they will use to go to the checkout page, and that these buttons appear at the top and bottom of pages.
- Number of transition pages: Designing the flow to minimize the number of transition pages (2 pages if possible) will lower the cart abandonment rate and increase the purchase rate.
- Guiding Information Messages: Customers should be informed about which stage of the shopping process they are in, and the address and cart summary information for the purchase should be shown at every step.
- Present Secure Payment Details: Most users are concerned about whether their personal information is safe. For this reason, including indications on the checkout page that payment is secure, such as 3D Secure/Visa/MasterCard logos, can reduce the cart abandonment rate.
- Offer the option to continue shopping from the checkout page: You can add a link that lets users continue shopping even after they have reached the checkout page. A user may have clicked this button just to see the products they added to the cart and may want to spend a little more time on the site.
- Allow guest checkout: It is also important to offer people who will shop on your site for the first time the chance to pay as a guest. Users may not want to register, and if you do not offer this option, you will miss potential sales.
Remove elements unrelated to payment from your pages: Remove links, banners or images that may distract users during payment or direct them to other pages from your checkout pages. These elements, which are regarded as distractions, can prevent users from completing the purchase.
This approach aims to make the payment method completely clear, to explain the differences between payment methods and thereby to increase the conversion rate.
