If you’re not converting as many shoppers as you would like, take heart, because you’re far from alone. A recent study, conducted by the Baymard Institute, found that the average cart abandonment rate was nearly 70% and Business Insider found that trillions of dollars worth of merchandise was left sitting in carts, with potentially over 60% of that being recoverable.

Statistics show that eCommerce retailers can take concrete steps that will have a massive impact on their conversion. From optimizing accessibility to utilizing advanced digital tools, there are many options to choose from and we will review a few of these best practices you can start doing today to help get your checkout process optimized and on the road to stronger conversion rates.‍

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1. Guest checkout is a must

• Required account creations causes 37% of consumers to abandon their card
• According to Commerce Cloud’s customer data, 85% of checkouts are made by guests
• If you want to add account creation, consider leaving until after the checkout process‍

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2. Be transparent about products, costs, and the overall checkout process

• Letting shoppers, especially first-timers, see the checkout steps reduces dropout over fears of a too complicated or long checkout process
• According to Forrester’s report, over 20% of shoppers will abandon a cart if the total cost, including fees, shipping, etc., is difficult to understand or see
• With that, provide sufficient product details to assuage any fears the customer may have regarding purchasing the wrong item(s)‍

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3. Cut your form to a more digestible size

• Forrester recommends an average of 12-14 form elements (including only 7-8 total fields) in your checkout flow, way below the average US checkout flow, which contains 23.48 form elements displayed to users
  

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4. Don’t highlight coupons

• Transparency is good, but don’t draw too much attention to coupon fields as this will cause your customers to leave your checkout process in the search of savings
  

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5. Optimize your checkout form

• Use the inputted shipping address as the billing by default with a collapsed option to add a different address
• In general, try to keep all optional form fields collapsed
• Make errors stand out to avoid confusion
• Utilize Google’s Geolocation API to optimize address input
  

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6. Make sure your buttons are clear and visible

• Keep your call to actions/button texts simple and use trigger words that make what they’re going to do clear
• In terms of visual hierarchy, try putting a button above and below your cart to ensure proper visibility
  

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7. Make sure your checkout is safe

• Baymard found that around 19% of visitors abandon checkout pages because they don’t trust sites with their payment information. The first and most obvious step is to make sure your site is fully secure.
  

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8. Utilize seals and images that make people feel safe

• Highlight trust, security, and SSL seals, such as Norton’s, VeriSign, or GeoTrust
• Use images that convey a sense of security (i.e. padlocks, etc.)
  

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9. No redirects!

• Keep them on your site and avoid redirects, which regularly prompt a warning message that will scare customers away
  

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10. Stand behind your product or service

• A Zendesk study found that the number one factor impacting vendor trust was their customer service, which highlights the need to showcase value by highlighting return policies, customer ratings, guarantees, etc.
  

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11. Test, test, and test

• Make sure you and others are regularly testing your checkout process looking for errors or bugs
• 17% of shoppers have cited website errors or bugs as their main reason for abandoning their cart
  

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12. Employ simple, mobile-friendly UX tactics

• The average index finger is around 50 px, make sure your checkboxes, menus, etc. account for that with appropriate sizing, margins, and form fields
  

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13. Get on the cutting-edge

• Have you heard of location-based marketing? If you have a brick-and-mortar store you may want to look into it.
• Time for a mobile app? In a recent survey, 78% of those surveyed said they prefer making their purchases via an app versus a mobile browser.
  

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14. Get personal

• Google found that 61% of mobile shoppers want personalized offers
• Marketing automation services, such as Samba, provide a wholly personalized shopping experience throughout all touch points, including email, web sites, and more
  

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15. Hire some chat bots

• Messaging apps now have a higher MAU than social networks and according to a BI survey, over 70% people surveyed were willing to receive customer support and nearly half were open to making a purchase through a bot
• Learn more about chat bots and how to get started with them here
  

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16. Start using automated, targeted abandoned-cart emails

• According to Salesforce, sending an abandoned cart email within 24 hours recovers 60% of lost sales and according to Listrak, initial emails, sent within three hours after a consumer abandons a cart, average a 40% open rate and a 20% CTR
• AI-powered tools, like the aforementioned Samba, automate and optimize this process, sending emails based on the history and preferences of each individual