Straight Talk

Focus on Checkout

You've got your customer in the bag. Well, their items are in the shopping cart, anyway. Checkout is where you'll find out if you have a happy customer (who may buy more and return to shop) or a frustrated customer (who may or may not complete the purchase and may or may not return). There are easy ways to ensure that your customer has a pleasant and effective experience, if you take the time to learn about them and implement them.

1. Do you give your customer all the information (shipping costs, tax, delivery dates, out-of-stock, etc.) as soon as possible?
2. Are your navigation and checkout processes clear and easy to follow?
3. Is it easy for the customer to change her order, to use promotion codes, coupons, gift-card redemptions, etc.?
4. Can your customer easily change shipping and billing addresses and can she segment the order to ship to different addresses?
5. Do you save your customer's cart?
6. Do you allow for anonymous checkout?
7. Do you send emails reminding them of abandoned carts and giving them incentives or thanking them for their order while offering promotions?

For more information, check out the article
 Boosting conversions with better checkout  by Bernardine Wu.