PayPal recently published some online checkout tips and guidelines to help reduce abandoned carts and increase conversions. With the busy 4th quarter coming up, it’s time to make sure that your website is in tip top shape so that you can get the most out of the busiest shopping season of the year. Each year online sales continue to grow as more and more people worldwide take to the internet to get their shopping done. PayPal  explains that one of the biggest problems when selling online is abandoned shopping carts. The Baymard Institute’s research calculated that shopping cart abandonment rate is at 68 per cent. Here are some tips to help ensure that you can reduce that percentage for your ecommerce efforts this holiday season.

 

  1. Include an easy-to-spot acceptance mark. Logos from trusted sources such as PayPal, the Better Business Bureau, and security seals, Mastercard or Visa. These instantly recognisable images help instill trust and can quickly dispel doubts about your site’s security and validity.
  2. Streamline the checkout process. Actually, the entire shopping process should be as streamlined as possible. This is especially true when it comes to the checkout process. The more steps that there are, the more likely a chance that shoppers will change their mind or give up for one reason or another. Many ecommerce programs offer one page checkouts for this very reason. It is important however, to find the right balance between brevity and including enough details to help answer frequent questions customers might need to know during the checkout process.
  3. Offer PayPal Credit as a payment option. Of course, since this is PayPal’s list, this is included here, but it is a very valid point. There are other financing services available too. If you have big ticket items, this is definitely something to consider.
  4. Offer multiple payment options. Customers like to have variety. Multiple payment options also help improve conversions because if one payment method didn’t work for them, they can try another without having to leave the checkout process.
  5. Don’t forget mobile. We already know how important mobile is and mobile commerce will be more popular than ever this holiday season. Your site and especially your checkout process should all be mobile friendly and responsive to fit on any size screen no matter how big or small.
  6. Add your logo to the PayPal checkout page. This helps improve the consistency throughout the transitions of the checkout process. The last thing you want is to scare your customer away at the last minute because the page changes drastically right at the moment you are asking for their secure payment information. Make all the pages of your checkout process as similar and consistent as possible. Test out messaging if necessary to ensure that customers don’t get confused or worried about where they are entering their personal information.

If you require further information or have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to give a member of the GoPromotional team a call on 0800 0148 970 or simply email us today.