By Mashum Mollah
The abandonment of shopping carts in online stores is still a big problem for websites that sell products and services through the internet. In many cases the abandonment rate can reach 60%, 70% or more, negatively affecting the conversion rate and losing a significant volume of business. Many stores that focus their efforts on costly and aggressive customer acquisition strategies, lose all the effort and money invested because they fail in the purchase process.
It is true that there is no single cause that affects abandonment, and that is why many aspects of the online business must be carefully analyzed: steps in the purchase process, product prices, shipping costs, access to critical information, security, means of payment, methods and delivery times, return policy, customer service, among others. Even for various services such as paper writing service, several purchase formats have been applied.
In this specific case, we will focus on analyzing the checkout or purchase process, which is the final part of that process in which the user already has the products loaded in the basket and we have to convince and help to finalize it so that it becomes a purchase.
Currently, there are 2 options that are the most widespread:
One step checkout or process in one step or page.
Multi-page checkout or purchase process in several steps or pages.
And I will add a third option that, although not very widespread, is a good alternative to the other 2:
Accordion checkout:
There is an analogy of the offline environment that is usually used to justify the format of a single step that is the following: when we are in a supermarket and we get to the cash lines to proceed to pay for the purchases we always look for the fastest and least people. And even on some occasions, we change lines if we see that one ATM is faster and more efficient than others. In the online world, and saving the distances, the same thing happens.
That is why in general terms it is stated that the one-step checkout is faster and simpler than the multi-page checkout since you only need to load a single page to complete the process. In any case, I believe that it can not be said that there is a single and best option for everyone since the best shopping process for each website will depend on many other factors related to the business model, product typology, customer profile, among other things.
Advantage:
Speed:
Although the form is the same in one format as in another, in this format the user does not have to wait for the different pages to load as in the multi-page.
Progress:
The customer can quickly see all the information at one time and knows exactly all the information he has to complete to complete the purchase. This also has a psychological component since the user knows that he does not have to be accessing several pages to buy.
Navigation:
The good and interesting aspect of this format is that there are no navigational elements since all the fields and information are detailed on one page. This means that there is no need to move forward and back during the process.
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