The average cart abandonment rate for e-commerce sites is 67.4%, or about $4 trillion every year. That’s a lot of profit – and potential customers – to be leaving on the table. You’ve done a lot of work to get customers to your site and convince them to add a product to their cart, don’t let that hard work go to waste by dropping the ball at the 100-yard-line!

By optimizing your checkout process, you can ensure your business gets as many sales as possible this holiday season and beyond.

Guest Checkout

Forcing customers to create an account can seriously hurt your sales (according to Forrester, 23% of people will abandon their shopping cart if they need to create an account). Make it as easy as possible for someone to buy from you, and install a guest checkout option today. Retailer ASOS managed to cut their cart abandonment rate by 50% by simply removing any mention of creating an account from their checkout page!

Remove Distractions

While announcing your holiday sale in the header of your website is fantastic when you’re trying to entice visitors to buy, once a consumer has decided to purchase you want them focused on filling out their billing & shipping information. Keep the checkout clean and enclosed, with few if any links to other pages.

You should also consider how long your checkout process needs to be. Do plenty of A/B testing to determine if a single page or multi-page layout is right for your store. When the Vancouver Olympic store ran this test, they determined that a single-page layout increased their conversions by 21.8%!

Provide Multiple Payment Options

In addition to major credit cards, accepting alternate payment methods like PayPal or Amazon can help increase conversion. Allowing customers to choose with whichever option they’re most comfortable with pulls down one more barrier between them and their purchase.

Be Upfront About Shipping

Customers often cite the unexpected cost of shipping as the #1 reason for abandoning their carts. Either make shipping free, or include the cost early in the process (even on the product page if possible) to avoid disappointment and annoyance later on. You don’t want a customer to associate your brand with frustration about “hidden” fees!

Retarget Customers Who Left

By sending emails to customers who’ve abandoned they’re carts and reminding them of the products they were looking at, you can catch even more sales! According to Listrak, emails sent three hours after a consumer abandons a cart average a 40% open rate and a 20% click-through rate. Don’t just write those customers off!

Above all else, test test test! Do tons of A/B testing on each aspect of your checkout process to determine the optimal layout for your store, and watch the conversions roll in.

Happy selling!

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