 | Murphy's Law (what can go wrong will go wrong) comes into its own when it comes to the online shopping experience. Online shopping is clunky at best. It is so much easier to survey a large number of items in a high street shop or a printed catalogue. But when customers try to navigate the online checkout process, Mr. Murphy is only too happy to exhibit the power of his Law.
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How does checkout trip them up? Let me count the ways.Trip One: Hidden Pricing, Crouching Fees
A goodly percentage of your would-be customers are price shopping. They want to see what you will charge compared to the next site, one click over. The best way to keep these penny-pinchers from making an abomination of your abandonment rate is to admit they are only using your shopping cart for a price tag.
So many web sites fail to give shoppers the full pricing picture. It's not rocket science, it simply requires thinking like a customer instead of like an IT operations manager. Allow your shoppers the ability to determine the total price, including shipping, taxes, fees and all by offering a "Price Check" on the product page. They put in the quantity they want and their shipping postal code and you let them know what the total price will be. Simple, and your abandonment rate will plummet.
Trip Two: Availability Invisibility
If you force shoppers all the way to the confirmation page before letting them know that the object of their desire will be backordered for several days or weeks, you have ensured an abandonment. Further, you have chased off a potential repeat buyer. They will never darken your website again.
If the item is in stock and the checkout is successful, offer up the nicety of order tracking. Has it been shipped? Who's the carrier? What's the tracking number? This will save you any number of calls to the call centre.
Trip Three: Cart Concealment
The customer clicks on "Add to Cart" and is then stymied as to where their cart went. The icon may more than obvious to you and right in front of them, but invisible nonetheless. Solution? Make the cart much more visible. Try a window on the right that shows the shows the carts contents and some up-sell / cross-sell suggestions.
Trip Four: The Long and Winding Road
Yes, there is a minimum of data required to process an order. But any additional data entry increases the likelihood of abandonment. Further, reducing the number of steps may not be a panacea. One, long form to fill out is more likely to cause cold feet than several short forms. Be sure you test the complexity o your checkout process to find the most agreeable.
Trip Four: Forcing Customers to Think Like a Computer
Customers are infuriated when slapped on the mouse for supposed errors they have made when the error was programming laziness or over complication.
"Your telephone numbers must be numerals only. Do not include spaces or hyphens."
Why not? How hard is it to recognise a hyphen, a space or even a parenthesis? Accept the fact that people are people and let them enter what they wish. You can parse their data, turn it into your own format and then verify that you have enough digits to validate their number.
"Passwords must contain at least 8 characters including at least one number
and one special character."
Why? This is their password, not yours. If they want a password called "password" then let them. For some, it's the only password they can remember. You're not offering them the keys to your data warehouse, just access to their purchase history. If they prefer low-grade security, that's their prerogative.
Trip Five: Error Filled Error Messages
Many error messages look nothing like the ones above. They look like something out of a UNIX manual.
If your Mum misses entering her email address, she does not respond well to, "Data Entry Error. Form error #436: Insufficient Data. Click Back to start over." She does not understand this lingo and she does not want to start over. A better approach would be a message that said, "We're sorry, could you please give us your email address so that we may complete this order?"
If you program the testing routines to check data after the Submit button has been clicked and before the page is actually submitted. all the information the customer typed in remains in place. You are much more likely to get a completed transaction.
Trip Six: No Checkout Progress Indicator
"Where in the process am I"? This is a common concern for online shoppers. Lots of steps require lots of concentration and in these days of multiple open browser windows, telephones and a vast assortment of other interruptions, a quick glance at a progress bar is reassuring. Are they on step two of five? Three of seven? A progress bar as simple as, "Review, Shipping, Billing Verify, Check Out" can spell the different between acquisition and abandonment.
Trip Seven: The Painfully Slow Cash Wrap
It's as true in retail as it is in call sales; When the customer is ready to complete the transaction, do it as quickly as possible. It is even more true online.
When a website visitor clicks that final Submit checkout-out button and nothing happens, they respond with concern, frustration and then abandonment. But "nothing happens" is in the eye of the beholder. Patience online is miniscule. "Come on - come on, I haven't got all day!" The smart ecommerce team runs constant tests to endure those back end systems are up to the task. The shipping address confirmation, the credit card verification, the stock decrement update and all the rest must happen in seconds.
If not, the choices are for the shopper to hit that Submit button again or tie up your call centre lines with web processing questions. Either way you have a customer service issue to deal with and have turned an otherwise satisfied customer into a seriously unsatisfied customer.
Trip Eight: Hiding the Helping Hand
If you don't get a fair amount of phone calls about your website, it may not mean your website is perfect. It may mean that your contact information is so well hidden that people give up trying to call.
Make this vital information instantly recognisable. Your phone number, email address, web-based contact form, fax number, live chat button, and postal address should all be on every page. They call because they are having trouble giving you money. Make it as easy as possible for them to accomplish this goal.
The Ideal Shopping Cart
I've been writing about online marketing since 1994. I cringe whenever this chestnut is brought out one more time, but it is the quintessential example. Yes, I am referring to Amazon.com. They have done so many things so right for so long that they deserve repeated mention. Here are two reasons you should follow in their footsteps.
First, Amazon created the 1-Click Purchase button. They already know who I am. They already have my shipping and billing information. They already know my delivery preferences. All they need is for me to say, "Yes" and enter a password that verifies that I am me. The next page simply says, "Thank you for your order."
OK - the next page does a little more work that that. Cross-sell, up-sell, recommendations and an invitation to continue shopping with an assurance that things purchased in a set amount of time can be put on the same order and perhaps be shipped in the same box are very motivational and very profitable. That brings us to the second Amazonian emulation motivation: They test everything.
Amazon is not satisfied that they have all the answers. Addressing all of the issues mentioned above does not make a perfect website. Amazon knows that their website will never be perfect. Times change. People change. Tastes change. Expectations change. So Amazon tests everything. Constantly.
Every time you read an article like this one that professes to have the answers, make note of the interesting suggestions and think to yourself, "That's interesting. We should test that."
That way, over time, your website will get better and better and better. Your shopping cart abandonment will dwindle and even Murphy will enjoy shopping with you.
