The checkout process is quite possibly the scariest part of the online shopping experience. Customers get anxious about divulging sensitive personal information, not to mention parting with their hard-earned cash. Long and complicated customer registration forms to fill out, strange error messages, security concerns, too many steps, etc., all contribute to shopper frustration and all too often, cart abandonment.

We recently did a review of our current out-of-the-box checkout process and we made the following observations:

• There are too many steps, resulting in a high cart abandonment rate.
• The distinction between customer types is confusing. "Am I a registered customer or an existing one?" "What's a 'guest'?"
• Giving the option to register during the first step of checkout is an unnecessary distraction. It gives customers too much time to change their mind!
• While the cart total is visible during each step, it doesn't provide a breakdown on specific items that have been added to the cart.
• Customers who have a promotion code don't know where to enter it, which leads to frustrated calls to customer service.

We started looking at ways to simplify the process and we came up with a shorter, smoother, and clearer checkout process that works well for various industries and customer types/profiles. In this new and improved checkout process, there are only three stages:

• shipping information
• billing information
• receipt and (optional) registration.
  

Shipping Information

In the new process, the login and shipping information pages are merged into a single page. If a returning customer can't remember their login name or password, they can skip it and just enter the shipping details without any extra clicks. Here, guests and new customers are treated the same.

The contents of the shopping cart are displayed on this page and on both of the other checkout pages, so the customer always knows exactly what they're buying. The coupon and promo code fields are also available at each step, under the shopping cart summary. Once a coupon or promo code is applied, the cart total is updated automatically via AJAX.

Billing Information

The billing step asks for the customer's email address and any other information required for invoice purposes. All the shipping information entered in the last step appears once again for final customer review. The final confirmation block is a good place to have a subscription or "sign up for email alerts" check box. Even if customers don't create an account, they may still choose to be on the mailing list.

Receipt and Registration

Unlike the standard checkout process, the customer is only asked to register for an account after they've made their purchase. Some retailers might worry that nobody will register unless they're required to. If that's a concern, you can provide some incentive for registering (like a discount on their next purchase). Keep in mind that the point is to avoid distracting the shopper from their goal, which is to make their purchase.

If the customer registers for an account after checkout is complete, that order will be associated with the new account. Unfortunately, previous orders they created will not be, even if they were created under the same email address as the new account. (This is for security reasons.)

This new checkout process will require using AJAX/JavaScript validation at every step, making it a bit tedious to code, but worth it in the long run.

We are currently in the process of integrating this new process for several of our clients and will be keeping a close eye on their performance and results. Of course, this process may not work for every ecommerce site. Hopefully this will at least give you some inspiration for ways to improve your own checkout process. There are always areas that can be simplified and streamlined. Just keep testing various aspects of your checkout process. That's the only way to really learn what works best for your audience.

Stay tuned and subscribe to our RSS feed because down the road we will follow up with another post regards the results and observations.