If you were running an online store, you would have come across the concept of the checkout process. Providing customers with a smooth checkout experience is a fundamental objective for any eCommerce website. As people nowadays are more attached to their mobile screens than desktop screens, everything you optimize for your website must also be optimized for your mobile phones.
As time passes, the number of mobile users is only increasing. Recently, mobile phones have become a convenient way of doing online shopping. Numerous businesses worldwide have understood the importance of a smooth user experience on mobile websites. If your online store is not responsive or generates errors during the browsing experience, it will only be a matter of time before customers stop trusting it. Your online store will eventually experience a high bounce rate, and your overall sales will decline.
Providing an ideal eCommerce checkout experience is the responsibility of every website owner these days. It ensures that the mobile checkout process on your store is free from all technical errors when users go through it from their mobile phones. If you want to build an online store, or your store is already up and running, ensure its checkout experience is smooth on mobile devices.
Importance of Mobile Checkout Experience
1) Add-on Purchases
Most eCommerce websites have to deal with the competition in their field, which is why they keep adding features to their site. They aim to provide users with a quality shopping experience and prioritize making a seamless mobile checkout process.
According to a study conducted by Brick Meets Click, an estimated 10% of people will do grocery shopping by the end of 2022. Furthermore, it is expected to grow by 13% each year compared to the 1.3% productivity expected in-store.
Image taken from Strikingly
If you have a well-established eCommerce website, you can allow your customers to conduct add-on purchases during their in-store pickup shopping process. However, if your customers place an order on a desktop, you can allow them to add to their order on their mobile devices through the scan-as-you-shop app for your online store.
This approach will increase your average value per transaction, which will eventually increase the overall revenue made from your sales. In addition, a smooth mobile checkout process on a mobile device can enable you to make more money through add-on purchases.
2) Preventing Deficits
A quality mobile checkout experience allows you to minimize losses for your business. Unfortunately, certain website owners feel that if they include the scan-as-you-shop technology in their online store, they may increase the risk of theft on their website. They assume that technology makes it easy for anyone to drop a product in the shopping cart without the requirement of scanning. However, the truth is that this approach helps retailers.
Image taken from Strikingly User’s Website
This mobile checkout solution lets retailers know about their customers, which helps them get in touch with them. A strong relationship with customers will only mean good customer service for them in the long run. The business owners understand that this technology helps them to cut losses for their business by building a good reputation for their online store.
If you feel that specific customers are involved in malicious activities, you can flag them and conduct a strict audit the next time they appear in your online store. In addition, you can go through your website statistics to locate suspicious people via law enforcement in your locality.
Mobile Checkout Best Practices of 2022
1) Eliminate Distractions
Unlike the desktop experience with extended screen sizes, the multitab shopping experience is extremely limited on mobile phones. Although tablets extend that functionality to some extent, mobile devices don't experience the same fate.
Smartphone screens have a limited amount of real estate. Hence, what you display in the eCommerce checkout experience must be limited to eliminate distractions. The objective is to complete the online sale by helping customers through the checkout phase. Therefore, please don't include the elements that bring them outside the checkout page.
Being the website owner, you must remember that mobile browsing space is limited. Therefore, any aspect leading customers to another page can result in abandonment. For example, you can leave coupon codes off your mobile checkout page. This is because coupon codes may make the customers think about where they can get the coupon. For example, they may read a newsletter or visit the store's Facebook page.
This confusion about the coupon will waste all your hard work in attracting customers to your store.
2) Display Most Important Product Information
Based on the length of the shopping experience in your online store, customers may need a moment to go through all of their potential purchases. They have to review their shopping cart during the checkout process.
Customers may feel frustrated if they come to the eCommerce product page or click elements on individual products in the shopping cart to rethink their options. The product they order should be blatantly obvious, especially if there are any varieties or other types of customization. The product information should include the following elements:
- Clear product images
- Product name
- Product dimensions (size, color, weight)
- Quantity
Apart from displaying the product information, it would help if you also made it easy for the customers to update their carts. For example, they should easily add to remove products, change options, update the quantity, etc.
3) Automatically Complete Fields
Autocomplete functionality can be a practical element if integrated with the checkout experience. If your eCommerce website can autofill forms during checkout, it will make shopping a breeze. Besides the checkout process, autocomplete functionality can make filling out any form easy.
Customers tend to refrain from using the autofill feature or storing personal information. But unfortunately, specific browsers, such as Safari, don't allow customers to autocomplete the fields unless the user enables the function.
If a visitor has visited your eCommerce website for the first time, you may need the data to autofill, but you can still make the process easy by managing some of the information. For example, when customers type the postal code, they can automatically fill in the city and the state name. In case of billing or shipping, the information will be saved already. One of the biggest reasons behind cart abandonment is the frustration caused by entering the information repeatedly. According to the stat shared by Drip, 50% of eCommerce websites tend to ask for repeat information.
4) Use Floating Labels
When your mobile checkout page contains longer forms, you must include floating labels to make life easy for your customers. Floating labels present the form with less information hovering around it. Instead, the placeholder text lets the customers know what to enter. Once they click the field, the text starts floating. This is an effective strategy because it ensures the customers keep track of what they should be entering.
5) Remove Popup Error Messages
Customers will get frustrated if they feel any interruption during the checkout process. Hence, the error message can be highly frustrating for them, especially if it happens with all the information being entered. They have no option but to go back and find the error to modify it. The best alternative is to use floating errors with real-time data validation.
This strategy immediately lets the customers know if there is any error. They won't need any form to reset or reload where they lose their provided information. There is no delay in the mobile checkout process as the customers can rectify the error before proceeding.
6) SSL Certificates
Customers have a lot of trust issues when it comes to online transactions and payment gateways. Concerns over online transactions are one of the biggest reasons behind cart abandonment. The best approach is to secure your online store, which improves your conversion rate and reduces friction. For website security, many entrepreneurs go for an SSL certificate.
Mobile Checkout Experience on Strikingly
Image taken from Strikingly
If you are building an online store or have an established online store on Strikingly, ensure that you provide users with a smooth mobile checkout experience. Strikingly is a well-established website builder that ensures you pay attention to your mobile users during your website development plans.
Image taken from Strikingly
You must customize the checkout form settings to change the eCommerce checkout settings on your Strikingly website. If you want to run your eCommerce website successfully, the checkout experience must be smooth. The smooth checkout experience will only result in more satisfied customers.
Image taken from Strikingly
Hence, Strikingly ensures that our users build an exquisite and speedy mobile eCommerce sequence for their customers. Our free plan enables you to build a basic website with all the fundamental features. You can bring advanced features to your website by upgrading your subscription plans.
Conclusion
Optimizing the mobile checkout experience covers various elements, but they all orbit around a central concept. First, since you are a business owner, you must ensure that you get your customers to the end of the checkout procedure with the least possible clicks.
To minimize abandonment and increase online sales, you must make your checkout experience as smooth as possible. Once the customers are satisfied with your shopping experience, they are ready to come to the checkout experience. From there on, it is your responsibility to limit the checkout process to a few clicks with few opportunities for the customers to walk away.
If you are yet to build an eCommerce website for your business, you can check out Strikingly and rely on this online store builder. Suppose you are facing issues in the customization of your checkout process or want suggestions regarding the online payment systems on your store. In that case, you can contact our Happiness Officers at any time.
