Checkout process optimization: Best practices for higher revenue

Which online vendor does not want a higher conversion rate, a higher turnover, and a lower budget for marketing expenses, because customers simply like to buy from him? In reality, however, this is not always so easy. Potential buyers have complex needs and must first be convinced not only to find their desired product, but also to buy it.

Checkout process optimization plays an important role here. The easier and smoother the checkout in the online shop, the higher the turnover. Conversion optimization for check-out in e-commerce should therefore be particularly important to you.

Studies show that approx. 90% of all users who visit an e-commerce shop leave without buying anything. A full 70% of potential buyers from all industries leave a full shopping cart without a purchase. The figures vary from 50% to even 80%. To avoid this, there are several ways to improve your checkout process.

In our guide, we introduce you to best practices for higher sales, and give you helpful tips for an ideal checkout process optimization.

How does the checkout work in e-commerce?

The check-out process in e-commerce is one of the most important elements that encourages your customers to access or leave the goods in the "store".
You therefore want to make the optimization of the checkout as easy as possible, so that your customers only click "Pay" and have bought the goods in just a few steps. If you offer too many pages to fill in your personal data, for payment options and for shipping, you will quickly scare away your customers at the last point of contact.

The shortest sequence for the checkout process in the online shop is as follows:

👉 The customer finds his desired product and places it in the shopping cart
👉 Customer clicks on the shopping cart, checks price and goods again
👉 He decides to buy and clicks on the "Pay Now" button
👉 Customer fills in their personal data, such as name, address and email
👉 He chooses a suitable payment option
👉 Customer completes the purchase

As you can see, these are already (at least) six steps that a potential buyer has to go through in order to ultimately submit their order. Unnecessary complication and prolongation of the checkout process can therefore lead to a lower conversion rate and drastically reduce your sales.

5 tips for checkout optimization in the online shop

To make checkout optimization easier for you, we have put together six important tips and tricks. Let yourself be inspired how to bring your shop check-out into shape and thereby increase sales in the online shop!

1. Optimize checkout with loyalty seals
Your customers want to trust you before they buy anything, especially online. In the right business, this is done by the seller, the product presentation and the awareness of the brand. In the online shop, for example, a seal of approval, a flexible right of return and positive customer reviews stand for quality.

Show yourself at your best! Trusted Shops offers loyalty seals for shop operators, which protects customers from non-delivery, non-refund and parcel loss. It also only includes real reviews from buyers who have actually purchased something from your store. This loyalty guarantee contributes significantly to checkout optimization.

2. Improve the checkout through cost transparency
Your customers are not only looking for the perfect desired product, but also for a better customer experience. A full 81% of potential customers are willing to pay more if the user experience (UX) – i.e. the shopping experience including the navigation of the online shop – conveys a positive experience. It should be graphically appealing, easy and fast, without hidden costs or additional surprises.

In order to optimize your checkout in the online shop, explain all costs from the beginning. Are there any additional shipping costs? Will the tax be topped on top? Do the shipping costs change depending on the quantity of goods? Be transparent about the total costs during your customers' online shopping tour, so that when the goods are ultimately in the basket, the customer already knows about the total costs.

3. Optimize the user experience in the checkout process
As already mentioned, not only the quality of your products and positive customer testimonials play a role if you want to attract new prospects, but also a positive experience in the online shop. This includes a high level of user-friendliness, intuitive navigation and an appealing interface.

Make it as easy as possible for your customers to walk through the virtual online shop. After all, who wants to search for the right product for a long time? The more targeted the search is for the customer and the more detailed the description of each product, the more pleasant the shopping experience, which in turn positively influences the checkout process. Classify your products by categories, colors, brand or price, so that your prospects quickly find the desired product, and like to buy.

Guided Selling is another alternative that increases usability throughout the store. A digital sales consultant advises the customer as soon as he enters the e-commerce store with appealing graphics and playbooks, sorts out unsuitable products through targeted questions, and thus accelerates the checkout process by far. The customer is guided step by step through the shop and accompanied from the search to the find.

This solves the common problem that a customer feels left alone in the online shop and no longer sees the forest for the trees, which significantly increases the conversion rate.

4. Checkout process optimization through "Tunneling"
The customer has found what he is looking for, the goods are in the shopping cart, now only the last step on the check-out page is missing. Less is more here.

Turn off product suggestions, pop-ups or other applications that could distract from the buying, especially in the check-out process. The customer should only see his goods in the shopping cart, the price and the "Buy" button.

What is referred to in marketing as "Tunneling" helps the customer to turn on tunnel vision, and to concentrate on the essentials: his desired product and to buy the product!

5. Simplify checkout in e-commerce with guest access
Customers often jump off shortly before buying, because they have to create an account in the online shop. This takes time and patience, and some people no longer have that after a long product search.

Support your customers with the purchase by the possibility to pay with a guest access! This speeds up the check-out process in the online shop enormously, because the customer does not have to create a customer account (which deters many), confirm the registration with an e-mail, and then log in again and pay.

With a temporary guest access, the customer's data is stored for this purchase, but not permanently. It is important for many interested parties to be able to decide for themselves whether to create a new customer account or not, as they already have many accesses on various platforms. Not everyone wants to create a new account for a one-time purchase!

Guest access increases the conversion rate by an average of 10-12%.

We hope that the guide article on checkout process optimization with best practices for higher sales has helped you and that you can implement some of our tips directly!
To learn more about our success with Guided Selling and increased usability in the online shop, download our case story with sparhandy.