by Fatema Mulla
When it comes to improving your eCommerce conversion rate, the cart can be a crucial page to optimise. To ensure your cart page is converting well, regular improvements and optimisation is required. Even small changes and improvements can drastically improve conversions - due to the engaged, purchase-ready traffic on these pages.
When it comes to improving your eCommerce conversion rate, the cart can be a crucial page to optimise. To ensure your cart page is converting well, regular improvements and optimisation is required. Even small changes and improvements can drastically improve conversions - due to the engaged, purchase-ready traffic on these pages.
We’ve put together our top tips on how you can improve and optimise your eCommerce site’s cart page to increase your conversion rate.
1. Promote Discounts and Special Offers
Cart pages are a simple place to upsell to your customers and promote exclusive offers. A good way to do this would be to offer discounted products that would complement the items the customer has already added to their cart, increasing the chance of the visitor increasing their basket value.
2. Allow Guest Checkout
More than 30% of shoppers abandon cart when forced to sign up, according to Smashing Magazine. Customers arrive at the checkout process wanting to purchase as quickly and easily as possible.
Forcing customers to sign up just to purchase even a single item can be seen as annoying and intrusive, and many tend to abandon cart.
Enabling guest checkout from your cart page allows first time customers to easily progress through the checkout process and purchase products without having to create an account. This helps to increase conversions, as customers are more likely to not only complete the purchase, but a stress free experience will also encourage them to return.
3. Emphasise Free Shipping and Returns
It’s not always enough to just simply offer free shipping and returns - ensure that these messages are emphasised and clear to see for the customer. Reiterate them on your cart page and give customers who are a little unsure that extra push.
Free shipping is extremely popular with shoppers - a study by Forrester found that 61% of customers prefer shopping with a store that offers free shipping.Similarly, assuring customers that there is a simple and free returns process will encourage them to purchase faster from your store, knowing that if they don’t like the item, returning it will be of no hassle anyway.
4. Ensure Your Cart Page Is Simple and Easy to Navigate
The last thing a customer wants to do when purchasing an item is fill in additional details, even after completing the checkout process. Ensure your cart page is short, simple and to the point, and does not require the customer to share too many details.
Only ask for information that is absolutely necessary, and try to make the entire process as condensed as possible, and simple to follow and complete. You can also enable autofill so that any additional details that may be required are automatically filled, saving them the time it would take to enter manually.
This example from Topshop shows a short, simple cart page that is easy to navigate, allows customers to easily edit preferences, whilst also clearly emphasising free shipping.
5. Add Reassurance
Security icons, privacy policies and quality assurance logos all help to increase customers’ confidence in your store. Reassuring customers that all their information will be kept private and secure will help to increase their confidence in your brand.
It’s also important to explain to customers how unique processes within the checkout will work, and how their information will be used and/or stored.
This example from our client Xercise4Less clearly explains to customers how their assigned credits system will work - adding trust and reassurance.
Let shoppers know that they can trust you and your site, and add security seals and logos where appropriate so they are aware of the relevant security in place.
6. Add Multiple & Compatible Payment Options
If you have a wide and diverse customer base, not all of them will be using the same payment type, be from the same country or use the same devices.
Making sure your checkout is responsive and easy to use on different devices and allows customers to pay using different methods on various mobile devices will encourage more shoppers to complete the checkout process.
Customers who use mobile devices for online shopping are more likely to use methods such as Apple Pay, Android Pay, Shopify Pay etc. so ensuring your checkout allows this will lead to more customers converting.
Allow shoppers to decide how to pay for their purchases by allowing for multiple different payment options.
Shopify now has a feature that enables different payment options for different countries - which was recently announced at this year’s Unite conference. Trusted payment methods are now automatically pulled in for international customers, allowing for a much improved customer experience.
Increase Your Conversion Rate with Your Cart
Improving your checkout and cart processes will improve user experience, and reduce the number of cart abandonments, thus resulting in an increase in conversions and ultimately sales for your store.
If you want to know more about how you can optimise your cart to improve your store’s conversion rate, just get in touch with our team and we’ll be happy to help.
