Let’s fix some common problems with the dark side of the checkout funnel – Payment Pages.
Payment pages are very much the dark side of a purchase process. It’s where final decisions are made, money is exchanged, and you live with the regret of buying a vegetable spiralizer from Amazon at 2am.
Convincing users to make a purchase is never easy (unless your name is Adele), and this is still the case when users reach the payment page. Despite being just one click away from a purchase, e-commerce websites often see a painful drop-off of around 10% between payment and confirmation pages. How much would it mean to your business, to have an extra 1% convert to confirmation? I’d imagine many cakes would be required to celebrate that lift.
Whether you’re in travel, energy, finance, retail or gaming, simple tactics can be employed to counteract the reasons that people abandon journeys so late in the process.
Why do people abandon purchases?
Usability Geek collated a series of studies, and reported that:
– 13% of people are worried about the security of the payment process.
– 22% of people experience surprising delivery charges.
– 7% of people feel that there are not enough payment options available.
Alongside this, it’s worth keeping in mind that users don’t always have what you’re asking for to hand – if services like iCloud are anything to go by, we expect our data to be remembered, and accessible anywhere, at any time. This notion is supported by research suggesting that users expect personalised content to grow significantly in the years 2016-2018.
Thankfully, simple techniques can be tested to combat each of these reasons for abandonment.
Security Seals:
Security Seals, in the form of either provider logos or adorable animals, are a sign to your users that your environment is a secure place to do business. These are trusted by users, and in varying degrees. With SSL being the standard for the entire web nowadays, you’ll have a provider who’s logo you can insert onto your payment pages. Combine this with an EV Certificate for the additional wording in the secure section of the address bar, and users should feel reassured that their details will be handled securely.
Surprising Delivery Charges:
Despite so many users abandoning purchases based on unexpected charges, it’s worrying to see so many retailers insist on introducing the price so late in the payment journey. A simple look into the UK’s top 5 Supermarkets (Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, M&S), revealed that 2 don’t provide delivery pricing until after the basket page.
Whilst the diversity of products on sale and delivery options available don’t always allow companies to present the options up-front, doing so wherever possible may remove the feeling of unexpected charges. However, it’s also important to keep in mind that we’re operating in a market where up to 80% of shoppers are considered to be price conscious. Finding the right balance between presenting information and reducing anxiety should help to win over some of the 22% we’re losing.
Lack of Payment Options Available:
PayPal, BitCoin, Stripe – the tech space has a rich set of payment providers available to utilise. In addition to catering for preferences that users often have, simply providing these methods has been known to generate an uplift for 8/10 merchants that use them. Whether running this via. a Client-Side or Server-Side test, even a small increment in sales can often offset the long-term costs involved with on-boarding a new or additional provider.
Users don’t always remember their credentials:
Despite technology constantly leaping forward, it’s surprising to see so few companies correctly tag their pages to allow for quick or even automatic completion of payment forms. Google states that “by correctly using autocomplete attributes on your forms, users complete them up to 30% faster” – meaning that not only are you making your processes more efficient, but improving form completion to account for those users who may have wallet inside their bags, which are “in the other room”. Combining this with good page mark-up using HTML5 attributes for your input fields, allows any user to get from A to B as quickly as possible, on any device.
As an example, having looked at the top 5 European Airlines (Ryanair, Lufthansa, British Airways, KLM, Easyjet) websites, they have an extremely varied use of auto-completion tagging. Whilst Ryanair does a great job of this – covering the breadth of options available, all the others were lacking in some area. KLM had good support for autocompleting address fields, but were deficient for payment, whilst Easyjet had the opposite.
Where convenience is key to removing friction, and getting users to completion, correctly tagging a website should be an instant win. This is especially true with impulse purchasers where these techniques reduce the time available for them to change their minds or rationalise reasons to not purchase.
The light at the end of the Funnel:
At the very time where users are being asked to make a financial commitment, taking away their reasons to abandon are absolutely essential. Most of these techniques are very simple to implement – requiring either a few lines of JavaScript/CSS, or 2 minutes with a capable Visual Editor tool. For those committed to testing and improving conversion rates, why wouldn’t you give it a try?
For more information on how we can help, get in touch.
