Excel in Ecommerce Checkout Optimization: Proven Steps to Build Trust and Boost Sales

Ecommerce stores spend thousands of dollars getting the look and feel of their storefront just right. However, they may need to pay more attention to checkout page optimization when looking for ways to encourage visitors to navigate beyond the home page. A 70% checkout abandonment rate suggests retailers could do more to push customers down the purchase funnel.

While the rise of ecommerce has revolutionized shopping behavior, it has amplified the challenges of getting that all-important conversion. How to optimize for the ideal checkout experience is the latest tactic online retailers are grappling with to improve their store's conversion rates and minimize checkout abandonment.

One approach is to offer a frictionless checkout experience, which research has shown increases conversion rates.

Another approach is eliminating surprises like unexpected shipping costs, which may trigger buyer remorse and pause the process.

A positive checkout experience would go a long way in helping merchants reduce the estimated $18 billion in lost revenue due to abandoned carts.

If you're looking to impact your ecommerce sales positively, there's no better place to start than looking at why shoppers are abandoning their carts and taking steps to improve your conversion rates.

What is checkout optimization, and why is it important?

Checkout optimization focuses on improving the checkout design and functionality of your ecommerce site's checkout process to reduce friction, minimize cart abandonment, and boost conversion rates. This often involves simplifying the layout, reducing the number of form fields, offering various payment and delivery options, ensuring mobile responsiveness, and enhancing security.

Why does this matter? The checkout process is the customer journey's final — and often most critical — step. If it's not smooth and intuitive, customers are more likely to abandon their carts and leave without completing the purchase.

Optimizing the checkout experience could help recover as much as $260 billion in lost orders in the US and EU markets alone. Making the process easier and more user-friendly allows you to turn more potential buyers into actual customers.

Ecommerce checkout best practices

One of the best ways to improve the checkout process is for an ecommerce business to minimize as many distractions as possible.

According to a new study from Future Commerce and BigCommerce, 91% of consumers indicated they would think less of a brand if their site was difficult to use.

Here are some best-in-class ecommerce checkout tips to get more customers to complete their purchases.

Simplify the checkout process.

With cart and basket pages, the key is to keep things as simple as possible. Summarize what the user has added to the cart and provide an obvious next step (as well as options around making changes to the order). Only include necessary custom fields since these naturally create more friction in the shopping experience.

Remove unnecessary clutter and make your call-to-action (CTA) clear. Lack of clarity is especially true with forms.

Many ecommerce sites still ask too much with form fields, degrading the overall user experience. It's not the number of steps a user takes to cross the finish line, e.g., place an order; it's what the retailer asks them to do that gives them pause.

If you optimize for checkout flow, you'll increase the likelihood that shoppers won't abandon the cart. Removing perceived difficulty in completing the checkout process will put your ecommerce site ahead of most sites that have yet to think much about ecommerce checkout.

Ensure a mobile-friendly experience.

According to Statista, by 2028, 63% of all ecommerce purchases will be made through mobile channels. Revenue from mobile ecommerce sales reached an estimated $1.7 trillion US, accounting for over half of all retail ecommerce sales. Mobile commerce rapidly evolves and shapes how we shop and interact with brands. As a result, retailers are increasingly focusing on UX.

A good mobile experience needs to be improved for your brand. Only 1% of online shoppers are satisfied with the ecommerce websites they visit, backing out in three seconds or less.

Mobile users are five times more likely to abandon their tasks if not optimized for mobile. A mobile-first customer experience is no longer a nice-to-have; it's a must.

Allow guest checkout.

When we invite guests into our home, we want them to feel welcome. The same holds for ecommerce checkouts. Allowing guest checkout makes your customers feel welcome. Asking for personal information before they are ready is a deterrent, which is how an account creation prompt may be perceived.

According to a Future Commerce and BigCommerce study, 63% of online shoppers will abandon a cart if they cannot check out as a "guest."

Another study found that 60% of shoppers needed help finding the guest checkout option on their mobile devices.

To reduce anxiety and bounce rates, retailers should allow guests to checkout or wait until customers feel more welcome before asking them to log in or register.

Enable smart form filling.

Web browser autocomplete tools like Chrome and Safari Autofill may seem presumptuous initially, but a quick address validation speeds up the checkout process and reduces input errors.

Intelligent form fills are a common addition as a checkout optimization best practice. Our partnership with Loqate makes it easy for ecommerce sites to validate a billing address in real time. This improved UX allows customers to enter relevant information faster and significantly reduces failed deliveries.

Build trust.

Trust signals are not just important, they are crucial for solidifying new customer relationships. An SSL certificate, for instance, is the first security measure every website needs. Google's algorithm, updated 10 years ago, favored HTTPS websites over HTTP sites, and websites that miss this element will also miss out on sales and rankings.

Users start to think about security when they reach the most sensitive parts of a webpage. How users perceive security during the checkout flow is the moment they reach for their credit card. Twenty-five percent of users have abandoned a checkout flow during the last three months because "they didn't trust the site with their credit card information."

Well-known third-party security brands like Norton/Symantec and McAfee help shoppers feel secure. Business accreditations like the Better Business Bureau and SSL providers like GeoTrust help, too.

Showing trust signals throughout the buyer journey helps ease anxiety. Reviews and ratings demonstrate social proof, making customers feel more comfortable buying from you.

Offer multi-language and multi-currency options.

Forrester predicts that global retail ecommerce sales will reach a remarkable $6.8 trillion by 2028. This presents a significant growth opportunity for merchants who can align their experiences with global consumers' behaviors and expectations.

Global commerce is nuanced. For example, payment preferences vary widely depending on the country. Many international buyers use digital and mobile wallets more than credit cards.

Offering a multi-language and multi-currency experience will help you win consumers worldwide. According to Airwallex, 93% of consumers say that seeing prices in their local currency impacts their decision to purchase.

That means providing accurate pricing (including tax) and delivery information, incorporating all relevant inputs in the checkout flow, and providing various global-friendly payment providers, including buy now, pay later options.

You can simplify your international expansion with BigCommerce's latest integration.

Check out progress indicators.

Online shoppers experience anxiety when the buying process is unclear.

A progress indicator is an excellent UI tool for highlighting where customers are in the purchase process. A nearly completed progress bar provides a visual cue, builds confidence and helps increase checkout completions.

You can also include a simple cart reminder or notification on your website for times a customer adds an item to their cart but doesn't initiate the checkout flow. For example, you can set up a pop-up to remind customers to complete the purchase.

Offer multiple payment options.

Convenience is everything for online shoppers. Recent innovations like digital wallets and Bitcoin accounts complement traditional payment options. Our research with Future Commerce found that 40% of online shoppers have abandoned their carts when mobile wallet options are unavailable.

Shoppers expect one-click experiences everywhere. Offering multiple payment gateways, like PayPal, Venmo, or Apple Pay, is the ticket to ecommerce sales.

Easy access to customer support.

Most people don't like surprises, so when customers encounter a bump in an online purchase, getting an answer quickly is critical to the sale.

Proper customer support at the right time can help keep customers on track toward completing their purchase. Real-time live chat is an increasingly important support channel. More than half of all consumers prefer to chat with someone in real-time and online rather than call a company for support.

However, many customers will prefer to talk to a live service rep, so display a phone number on your website at a minimum.

Clear, visible links to essential policies like returns, help and Terms & Conditions can mean the difference between a completed or abandoned cart.

Ecommerce checkout optimization success stories

If you want to blow past your growth goals, these ecommerce sites will show you the way. They found the path to mobile revenue and conversions was to optimize their ecommerce checkout.

White Stuff.

Case Study: White Stuff

As the name suggests, White Stuff started life on the ski slopes. Since 1985, they have opened over a hundred stores in the UK and Germany. Throughout this period of growth, the brand's ethos has remained the same — to keep exploring.

To that end, they aimed to bring shoppers closer to the brand by removing friction from the checkout experience. They determined that speeding up and simplifying the process would be a good move, and A/B testing proved the hunch was correct.

The most considerable boost to customer experience was changing a three-page to one-page checkout. 

The results from this change were impressive: a 100% speed boost on mobile, a 37% increase in conversion rates and a 26% increase in average order value.

Wreaths Across America.

Case Study: Wreaths Across America

Wreaths Across America is on a year-round mission to honor those who serve in the US military and teach children the value of freedom. They are most well known for the veterans' wreath-laying ceremony in December. With high traffic during the fourth quarter, they needed a user-friendly website allowing customers to place orders online.

With 4,000 participating locations and over 5,500 sponsorship groups, they needed a way to manage many national orders. So, they created a custom checkout experience that allows customers to edit their shopping carts.

The streamlined checkout process improved the online experience considerably. Wreaths Across America has seen a 63% increase in revenue, a 28% increase in orders and a 27.5% increase in average order value.

How BigCommerce supports an optimized checkout experience

Designing an optimal checkout experience is both an art and a science. The site needs to be functional but visually appealing, provide a seamless user experience, and make each person feel unique. Finally, customers want the convenience of self-serve, just like they enjoy at their favorite grocery store only for their ecommerce checkout.

Here's how BigCommerce supports an optimized checkout experience.

Single-page checkout.

Checkout page optimization will pay dividends well into the future. When you minimize the steps needed to complete a purchase, a customer will gladly hit the "Complete Order" button. A single-page checkout simplifies data entry and prevents cart abandonment, which lengthy multi-page checkouts often cause.

A new study by Incisive proves that BigCommerce's checkout experience increases revenue with a visit conversion rate of 20% higher than the market benchmark.

Customizable checkout experience.

BigCommerce offers a rare customizable feature set that gives businesses the freedom and flexibility to create tailored checkout experiences specific to their customers' needs. It provides the best one-page checkout UX, guest checkout, multiple wallet integrations, shipping options and tax capabilities, and multilingual and multi-currency — the list goes on for best-in-class functionality.

Like the one-click "Buy Now" button, our embedded checkout feature closes the gap between inspiration and conversion. You can quickly test product page conversion rates by adding accelerated checkout for top-selling or in-demand products.

Multiple payment options.

As mentioned, integrating popular payment solutions can help speed up the checkout process and minimize cart abandonment. Flexible payment options, like Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL), and financing options, like Klarna, can attract a new generation of younger buyers.

Digital Natives, who have only known life online, respond to the instant credibility of digital wallets like Apple Pay and Amazon Pay. Remember, your target audience will determine the payment options that deliver the best ecommerce checkout experience specific to their needs.

Global support.

If selling internationally sounds daunting, BigCommerce can ease your concerns. We've been helping build global online stores for a long time. Our single backend supports operations while reducing costs. The best part is knowing you have options. Whether doing business in multiple currencies or languages, we've got you covered.

Cross-country shoppers may abandon their carts because they fear their personal information won't be handled securely. A global ecommerce partner like PayPal gives your business access to local funding methods around the globe without the hassle of opening multiple merchant accounts overseas. And PayPal security badges help build trust.

The final word

Optimizing the ecommerce checkout process is crucial for businesses looking to maximize their online sales potential. Companies can significantly reduce cart abandonment rates and boost conversions by implementing best practices such as streamlining the checkout flow, offering diverse payment options and prioritizing mobile user experience.

The success stories demonstrate that checkout process optimization can substantially improve revenue and customer satisfaction.

In an increasingly competitive ecommerce landscape, businesses that focus on creating a seamless, user-friendly checkout experience will be better positioned to capture sales and build customer loyalty.

FAQs about checkout optimization