How to improve your conversion rate: Part 2

In our last conversion rate article, we looked at what you can do to get more people to press the 'buy now' button. In this article, we'll look at what you can do to maximise the number of people who make it through your checkout process. Although we've done everything we can our end to optimise the checkout experience, there are certain actions you can take that will also help increase your conversion rate.

1. Prepare your customer for checkout and what to expect

Customers abandon their shopping carts when something unexpected happens, for example, they are taken to a page they don't expect, they are given a payment option which sounds difficult, or they suddenly lose trust in your payment process. To reduce the likelihood of this happening, make sure you prepare your customers about what to expect.

For example, if you only give your customers the option to checkout via PayPal then make sure you mention this, and reassure customers that they can pay using a credit or debit card if they don't have a PayPal account. Some customers won't realise it is possible to pay on payment services such as PayPal without an account and will leave before they can find out.

Equally, some customers are confused when they end up on a PayPal payment page without prior warning. They wonder what's happened to the website they were on, why they are on a completely different type of page, and whether this is a mistake or a safety issue. Prepare them for this step and you'll relieve at least some of their concerns.

Adding your logo to your SendOwl checkout and your PayPal account should also help reassure customers that they are on track.

2. Reassure your customer about security

Safety online is a big concern for consumers: according to econsultancy, 58.4% of respondents cited concerns about payment security as a reason for cart abandonment.

58.4% of people cited concerns about payment security as a reason for cart abandonment

Working with specialists

Reassuring your customers that specialists (like PayPal, Stripe and SendOwl) are handling their transaction helps them to feel safer, and are therefore more likely to hand over their hard earned cash. You can use logos or copy to let customers know that you'll be working with reputable experts to process their payment.

Trust symbols

Research is conflicting about whether adding trust symbols to checkout pages boosts your conversion rate. On the one hand, they are easy to forge and so can be perceived as meaningless and distracting. On the other, some customers actually do trust them. You can add trust symbols to checkout pages through SendOwl.

Look real

Showing customers that you are a real, helpful and reputable company should improve your conversion rate. For example, Econsultancy found that 33.3% of their respondents said a lack of contact details would deter them from completing the purchase. This is understandable because customers want to know that should they need help, they will get it. Plus you need to show that you aren't just some fraudsters who have skinned an ecommerce site!

Showing that you have a helpful customer service department up front can also help boost your conversion rate. You can do this by showing quotes from happy customers, by foregrounding your customer support contact details, or by having live customer support chat.

3. Customise your checkout

Customising your checkout experience will help reassure customers that they are 'on track', and prevent them experiencing that feeling of dislocation and confusion when they move from your beautifully designed site to a very different style of page.

As a SendOwl seller, you can get your cart, checkout and download pages to match your site. Just visit the Account tab and click Customizations in the sidebar to configure exactly how you'd like the pages to look. Or you can specify your own CSS for more advanced customisations.

Natalie Rousseau has uploaded a logo and matched her brand colours so the checkout seamlessly merges with her site

4. Make sure you have a clear pricing strategy up front

If your product is $9.99 make sure it's clearly labelled as that. There's nothing quite like reaching a checkout page to find the price higher than you expected – and what customers consider to be misleading pricing will lead to a nosedive in your conversion rate. However, we realise that with the new EU VAT rules, following this best practice may be surprisingly tricky.

20% of customers will abandon a cart if the checkout process is too long or confusing

For example, you might price your product at $9.99 but the actual cost to a customer depends on where they live and whether they are a VAT-registered business. So, if you want to be honest with your EU customers you might write: $9.99 + VAT up front. However, you then worry that this 'honest' pricing strategy might confuse or put off non-EU customers who don't pay VAT and recoil at the thought of it!

What to do? We suggest taking a look at your % split of EU v non-EU customers. If you have a lot of EU customers then the $9.99 + VAT route might work best; if you only have a few, or have blocked all EU sales because of the EU VAT rules, then just writing $9.99 would probably be best. If in doubt A/B test and see what impact, if any, these micro copy changes have on your conversion rate.

5. Offer different checkout options

According to WorldPay statistics, alternative payments account for 22% of global e-commerce transactions, worth a total of €165bn. Therefore, it makes sense to offer different payment methods and appeal to as many potential customers as possible.

SendOwl offers accounted payment services (such as PayPal), non-accounted payment services (such as Stripe), merchant account gateways (such as Authorize.net), innovative payment networks (such as Bitcoins) and European payment methods (like Bancontact). While not every option is available in every country, adding additional checkout options where possible gives customers the flexibility to pay how they want. This is an important point if you consider a payment gateway like PayPal, which has a group of loyal followers and a group of people who will avoid it at all costs.

6. Recover lost sales

If customers abandon your cart at some point during the process, don't automatically assume it's all over. A BI Intelligence 2014 report cited in Business Review Europe suggests that 63% of abandoned carts are potentially recoverable.

20% of cart abandoners return and purchase after retargeting

Where contact details are available for the buyer, it's often a good idea to follow up with them and see if there's anything you can do to help. They might be confused about something or have had sudden doubts about your credibility. Of course, some customers may not have been ready to buy, have been too busy, or have been doing a spot of price comparison shopping. In these cases, a discount coupon may encourage the customer to complete the transaction.

Hubspot suggest that 20% of cart abandoners return and purchase after retargeting.

SendOwl's cart abandonment feature helps you recover lost sales, whether you have a customer's email or not.

7. Make more money on each sale

Although upsells probably won't increase your conversion rate, they do mean that you can earn more on each sale without extra marketing spend. Pre-checkout and post-payment upsells work on the basis that it is easier to sell to existing customers (or nearly customers) than it is to complete strangers. According to the book Marketing Metrics:

The probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%.

We launched one-click upsells in 2016 and have been getting some encouraging feedback from sellers about how much extra money they are making. Read our blog post: Do one-click upsells make you more money?

Maximize your checkout value with upsells

Conclusion

As most sellers will admit, getting customers to their website in the first place is the really hard part. So, making sure that as many of them as possible make it through your sales funnel is one of the easiest ways to improve your bottom line, without tearing your hair out or spending a fortune on marketing.

In our last conversion article, we looked at getting customers to press the 'buy now' or 'add to cart' button. In this article we've concentrated on encouraging customers to make it through your checkout process. We really hope that these tips and advice will help you increase your conversion rate, after a bit of testing and experimentation.

Next steps

If you're already selling or nearly ready to launch, why not take SendOwl for a test drive? We offer a 30 day free trial (no credit card needed). We can also help you move from a competitor. See pricing and free trial or features.