Streamlining Your eCommerce Checkout Process

Imagine yourself as Emmy, an avid online shopper who added her favourite products to her cart while shopping on an eCommerce platform she had found on the internet. She was very excited to make a purchase. But, as she pressed the buy button, her excitement turned into frustration as she was bombarded with old-fashioned long forms where she had to provide too much information. She quickly realized she cannot spend that much time on the checkout process, and this led her to cancel the order. According to a survey, the cart abandonment rate remains at 69% for eCommerce platforms.

The above-mentioned case is an eye-opener for eCommerce businesses. Most of the eCommerce platforms lose their potential customers and revenue due to a long, exhausting and outdated checkout process, as shoppers do not want to waste their energy in the post-buy process. Due to this reason, people prefer to shop from platforms where they are not intimidated by such a lengthy eCommerce checkout process. In this post, we will explore ways through which eCommerce businesses can streamline their checkout process and save themselves from losing out on customers and, eventually their market share.

Need for a Swift Check-Out Flow

With advancing technology and rising trends for Instant Checkout, it’s becoming essential for eCommerce platforms to have a swift checkout in place, which appeals to shoppers, especially Gen Z and Millennials, as they are tech-savvy and constitute a large percentage of customers shopping online. Usually, such shoppers look for user-friendly platforms which are easy to navigate, appeal to them visually and have swift checkout in process.

If you are an eCommerce platform and want your customers to never go without making a purchase after pressing the buy button, you should be trying out the below-mentioned tested and reliable strategies for streamlining your checkout flow, reducing the cart abandonment rate and providing an unmatched shopping experience to your customers.

Redesigning your Checkout Flow

A streamlined and swift checkout flow can significantly reduce your cart abandonment rate, which can lead to high sales revenue and increased market share.

Eliminate the Un-Essential Steps

Put yourself in the shoes of a customer and navigate through the checkout process. Start with identifying the unessential and unnecessary steps in your checkout flow. Look for steps which can be removed without disturbing the overall flow. You may merge two or more steps to make it easy for the customers to navigate and fill out their information.

Traditional Checkout Flow

Most of the traditional checkout flow consists of the following steps.

shopping cart > billing info > shipping info > shipping method > preview order > payment > confirmation

As an eCommerce platform that wants to appeal to a larger audience, you can combine various steps. Such as, you can take billing info and shipping info, and shipping method on a single page. Similarly, you can preview order and payment confirmation in a single step. This would redesign your checkout flow as follows.

Redesigned Checkout Flow

shopping cart > billing info + shipping info + shipping method > preview order + payment + confirmation

The new checkout flow contains only three steps compared to the previous flow contained 7, which was a great hassle for the customers. The new checkout will allow your platform to decrease the cart abandonment rate significantly and gain happier and more satisfied customers.

Integrating Multiple Payment Gateways

Not having enough payment gateway options can be a hurdle in setting up an attractive checkout process. To cater for the needs of a diverse customer base, it’s essential to have reliable and efficient payment gateways integrated with your platform. These gateways may include PayPal, Stripe and other such platforms which are trusted by the users.

Using a Subscription Management Platform

Here a subscription management platform like SubscriptionFlow can enable you to integrate multiple payment gateways with your platform and offer flexible payment options to your customers. Consider the example of Emmie, an ecommerce platform selling toys, which was suffering from a high cart abandonment rate due to a lack of payment gateways.

By integrating SubscriptionFlow, Emmie was able to seamlessly integrate payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal with its platform. Because of this, they were able to appeal to a wider audience, which led their cart abandonment rate to drop.

Make Your Checkout Flow Gen Z Friendly

In this digital age, eCommerce platforms should cater to Gen Z shoppers’ preferences as they constitute a bigger percentage of shoppers. With their tech-savviness and demand for seamless experiences, integrating a ChatGPT bot and leveraging other automated flows can transform the checkout process into a Gen Z-friendly journey and let your ecommerce platform get ahead of the competition.

Providing Personalized Assistance with ChatGPT Bot

With the introduction of ChatGPT, it has become essential for businesses to leverage this AI-powered platform to get a competitive advantage. Nowadays, ChatGPT bots are trending for personal assistance. Integrating a ChatGPT bot into the ecommerce platform allows for real-time, personalized assistance throughout the checkout process.

Ensuring Flawless Customer Support

The bot can provide product recommendations, answer FAQs, and guide users through the steps, ensuring a smooth and engaging experience. Its conversational nature appeals to Gen Z’s preference for interactive and dynamic interactions. This can lead to low cart abandonment and churn rates to gain a competitive advantage.

Integrating Autofill and Smart Fill Technologies

There are various autofill and smart fill technologies available in the market which you can integrate with your eCommerce platform and let the information forms autofill themselves for your customers. This can be an extremely effective strategy for appealing to your Gen z audience as always look quick checkout process which can save them plenty of time.

Making Your Platform Mobile Friendly

Making your platform mobile friendly can be an extremely effective strategy to capture the Gen z audience as most of the young generation tend to shop on their mobile phones, and having a mobile-friendly platform can be a great attraction and source of competitive advantage.

Ensuring the Highest Payment Security

Payment security is today’s generation’s most prominent issue while making an online purchase. With rising cyber frauds, it’s becoming more and more essential for ecommerce platforms to have a secure payment system in place. With SubscriptionFlow, you can integrate third-party hosted payment pages with your eCommerce platform to make your payment more secure and gain the trust of your customers.

Considering the ongoing digital age, it has become essential for eCommerce platforms to cater to the customer base’s needs. The key lies in compacting the checkout flow, eliminating any unnecessary steps or confusing elements that can lead to customer frustration and cart abandonment. By carefully analyzing user behaviour, preferences, and pain points, ecommerce platforms can redesign their checkout processes to align seamlessly with the expectations and desires of the young generation, who are not only the primary users of digital platforms but also tomorrow’s trendsetters.