Did you notice a high rate of your customers leaving during checkout? In this article, we’ve put together four main reasons why your customers may leave during checkout and we’ll show you some tips to help you avoid it.
1. Completion of the purchase is conditional on registration
After spending almost twenty minutes of their time choosing Christmas gifts for all of their family members, your customer is finally determined to complete the order. They press the ‘order’ button and a page with the text ‘Registration is required to complete the order’ appears.
Some may just say ‘okay’ and sign up. Others will think about why you require them to register if they don’t plan to visit your e-shop again, because they only need the goods they wanted to order for a special occasion. Others may be deterred by the number of fields they need to fill out when registering and they’ll wonder whether it’s worth their time. Don’t risk losing a customer because of mandatory registration.
* Offer the customer the option to register only after completing the order, along with the benefits of why they should do so.
2. Complicated purchasing process
A common reason why a customer leaves during checkout is precisely because the shopping process is so complicated that the customer has trouble completing it.
These few tips will help you simplify the purchasing process:
1. Get rid of unnecessary texts, buttons and fields in forms
Direct all customer’s attention to completing their order. Remove all unnecessary items from the basket. They could unnecessarily lead the customer to leaving the basket. So don’t be afraid to remove the entire page navigation, footer and other elements from the basket and leave only the order form itself with the logo of your e-shop.
2. Make filling out forms easier
Don’t force the customer to list information they have already provided you with.
* In the case of a logged in customer, you can pre-fill the data they provided during registration.
Think for a customer.
* Autocomplete is a great feature that not only saves time but also avoids filling errors and typos.
Customize the basket to your customers.
* If you know that 90 % of your customers come from Slovakia, show them this option first.
3. Inform the customer which step of the order process they’re in
Be transparent and make it clear to the customer how many steps await them in the order process and where they’re currently located.
3. Unexpected shipping costs
Unexpected costs are one of the main reasons why many customers leave the basket before completing a purchase. No one likes unpleasant surprises, especially when it comes to money.
Let’s see how to prevent them:
1. Inform in advance
In case of a higher shipping cost, inform the customer about the price in advance. Ideally, show the information about the shipping price in the product detail. The customer won’t be surprised in the purchase process.
2. Free shipping
Another successful strategy is to take the price of transport into account in the price of the product and thus offer “free shipping”. People are more willing to pay a higher price for goods than to pay for shipping. They see the value in the goods for which they pay, while they perceive shipping only as a kind of a tax.
Offer free shipping even if it means increasing the price of the products by a few Euros.
You can also specify a minimum order value to get free shipping, thus motivating customers to buy more goods. Among other things, free shipping is also a great competitive advantage.
4. The site looks untrustworthy
Have you ever come across a great product on the Internet, but the e-shop on which it was offered looked quite outdated? You have probably wondered if the e-shop works at all. Not to mention if you would provide such an e-shop with your credit card details. And this is one of the main reasons why your customers leave the checkout before completing their purchase. They simply don’t trust your e-shop.
These 5 tips will help you look more trustworthy:
1. SSL certificate
Do you want to look trustworthy on the web? In that case, an SSL certificate is a must for you. Among other things, it will help you improve your position in search engine results and that really pays off!
2. Safe purchase certificate
Another certificate to help you look more trustworthy. For example, “Dr.Max, Zoot, Mall, Martinus” and many other successful e-shops have that.
www.bezpecnynakup.sk
3. Modern and responsive design
Gone are the days when push-button phones with small displays were trendy. Today, most customers shop through their smartphones and that’s why your website should be responsive. Don’t underestimate the responsive version and make sure that your e-shop is easy to use on all devices.
4. Avoid errors on the page
If you display this “ 
” instead of a picture to the customer, it certainly won’t add to your trustworthiness. Make sure everything works as it should on your website.
5. Positive customer reviews
Customers like to read reviews on portals such as heureka.sk. Take care of your customers so they write about you in a good way.
