E-commerce shopping cart: how to optimize it to increase your users' conversions

**1) Why optimize the shopping cart and payment process of an ecommerce?

If we were to come up with a metaphor to best describe the impact of the payment process on the experience of a user visitor to an e-commerce platform, we could compare it to a dinner at a restaurant where the moment of enjoying dessert is particularly impactful on our perception of the experience we have just had, both in a positive and negative sense.

Equally, a user's experience on an ecommerce platform can take on a positive or negative connotation depending on the quality and immediacy that govern the manner by which they make the payment for the products in which they are interested.

In this regard, particularly telling is the statistic, found during 2021, regarding cart abandonment, which equates, on average, to 70% of carts generated by user visitors to an ecommerce platform.

Then again, it is also somewhat normal. Just as it is in a physical store, it is one thing to display products in the window and bring people inside to let them browse for a while, quite another to be able to convert the total traffic of people into a satisfactory volume of purchases made.

The latter, will always equate to a percentage, large or small as the case may be, of the total traffic that the featured products have generated.

However, this does not mean that your company cannot take action to significantly increase the percentage of visitors who purchase your products.

2) Here is a list of five tips on how to optimize your e-commerce shopping cart to increase sales and limit abandonments.

2.1 Allow secure payments for all types of users

Not all visitors have the desire and time to perfect the sign-up process for a website and/or service.

Sometimes they may realize they can get away with it in a few clicks, using third-party authentication systems such as Apple, Google or Facebook; at other times, however, the sign-up process turns out to be a real deterrent to any vague desire to make a purchase.

In this regard, it is important to allow your e-commerce visitors to complete the ordering process by relieving them of this tedious and mechanical process.

Some online payment systems, including the giants Stripe, Paypal and Adyen provide very intuitive checkout processes that allow secure and fast payments for all types of users, whether they already have an account or not.

Users, in fact, begin to evaluate aspects related to security when they reach the most sensitive parts of a web page.

In the case of online shoppers, this moment coincides with the moment of making a payment. Therefore, it is crucial to show elements of trustworthiness during the buyer's journey. Here are some of the most commonly used:

• SSL certificate and mention of a secure shopping experience. You could also make use of security software brands such as Norton, McAfee, GeoTrust, etc.
• Logos of available payment options (and ideally payment certification, e.g., "verified by Visa")
• Reviews and mentions of other satisfactory shopping experiences.
• Explain the terms of use and data processing in compliance with current GDPR regulations

2.2 Ask only for information necessary for purchase.

Collect the information you absolutely need from the customer, eliminating all unnecessary steps and streamlining the process. If you can, get a customer's email early in the process, as this is the only essential information you need to be able to follow up and market a product to them.

Each extra step costs more time to the customer, making the experience less convenient and enjoyable. Moreover, due to the recent increase in online scams and fraud, online customers are increasingly reluctant and cautious about providing personal information online.

So, removing steps and requests for non-essential information, increases the perceived safety and immediacy of the purchase process.

2.3 Offer different shipping options

All of us have been online customers at least once, and we all retain particularly positive memories of the buying experience when goods arrived in short time and meeting expectations.

This explains why, with the saturation of the online marketplace, it is increasingly important to differentiate your business from that of your competitors or at least stay in step with the needs of your target consumer. In this case, having different shipping and return options can be very beneficial for the purposes of retaining existing customers and acquiring new ones.

Pitney Bowes' 2021 Global e-Commerce Study finds that 56 percent of consumers were disappointed with the last holiday season due to difficulties with shipping.

Of that 56 percent, consumers listed major problems such as delayed shipments, high shipping costs, unfulfilled orders, wrong products shipped, unclear return policies, and shoddy packaging among the most common reasons at the root of their disappointment with the buying process.

Clearly, having a well-executed shipping plan can have a big impact on the success of your ecommerce. As many small businesses know, every sale matters and satisfied consumers are much more likely to shop on the same portal again.

2.4 Optimize checkout for mobile devices

In 2021, 73 percent of all online purchases were made using a smartphone or mobile device.

This is certainly not a surprising statistic, considering the clear trend that has seen dramatic increases in the ** browsing time** of users on mobile devices over the past two years, but it does quantify the importance of adjusting one's checkout process to suit the traffic that turns out to have the greatest tendency to convert their visits into purchases, increasing the profitability of one's e-commerce portal.

2.5 The entire payment process on a single page (quick checkout)

The quick checkout consists of an ultrafast payment form, usually designed for repeat customers, which reduces the number of fields to be filled in to ensure a faster and more efficient payment process.

Shipping, billing and payment information is posted in a restricted area of the site, making it simple and efficient for the customer. However, as mentioned in 1), it is important to extend the quality of the quick checkout experience for visitors who do not already have an account on our e-commerce site.

This way you can be sure to minimize the percentage of abandoned carts, significantly increasing the value of your sales.

3) Examples of optimized checkouts and tips for measuring your progress

In order to get an idea of how an optimized checkout is structured, we can refer to the major ecommerce giants, such as Amazon, Nike, Zalando, which offer first-class shopping experiences, limiting the information and clicks required of the user to a minimum.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning the care with which these companies remove unneeded information during the purchase process (navigation elements, such as navbar and footer, are often hidden) to maximize the chances of converting each visit into a purchase.

Team Fontoso recommends using tagging and traffic analysis tools such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager and Google Search Console in order to monitor key health indicators of an ecommerce's shopping experience. Here are some examples of useful metrics to define the health of your ecommerce:

• Number of product pages visited per session
• Average length of a shopping session
• Number of pages visited per product category in each session - Session abandonment rate on checkout page
• Average monetary value of carts purchased
• Average monetary value of abandoned carts
• Conversion rate by products and categories.

Conclusion

The process of optimizing one's ecommerce portal that we have described in the previous points is meant to be a slow and steady process that uses traffic analysis and monitoring as a compass to properly prioritize the interventions needed to increase the conversion rate and decrease the abandonment rate accordingly.

However, it is not easy to embark on this journey if you do not have the right resources, both time and human, needed to plan and implement optimizations and changes.

If you are looking for someone who can support and work alongside you during this long process, the Fontoso team is available to offer a free consultation on the health of your ecommerce so that together we can identify the main areas of improvement to work on. 

Contact us using the appropriate form in the Contact section.