How to Increase Alternative Checkout Options

For an e-commerce company, offering attractive checkout options to the customers is one of the most challenging tasks. Providing alternative checkout options may help a business in achieving a higher checkout process conversion rate, which is one of the most important metrics for gauging its efficiency. Another advantage associated with providing alternative checkout options is that it helps in controlling the rate of shopping cart abandonment by the customers. Further, smoother checkout process also provides an inducement to the customer to make a repeat purchase with the business.

Following are the main ways online businesses may provide a friction-less checkout experience to their clients and improve their business efficiency.

• Make Sign Up Optional: It may seem tempting to make sign up necessary for checking out since it can provide you with valuable data but this requirement may put a serious dent in the conversion rate. Instead of making sign up mandatory, make it optional but with some incentive attached to it. For example, you can convey to the customers that the sign up may make the process faster. Another option is to let the customers sign in with alternative accounts such as Facebook or Twitter. This type of checkout can be customized so that the business may harvest the data from the customers’ social media accounts after receiving due permissions.

 

• Simplify the Process: If you are not convinced about the idea of checkout process sans sign up then you may focus on simplifying the whole procedure. There are several tricks to make it easier and faster for your clients to complete their sign-up process so that they can check out in a smoother manner. You can use simple tools such as making use of Google Autofill which can complete various data fields in a jiffy. You should also ensure that the checkout procedure is simple and is not unduly complicated with a number of steps involved. With each additional step, the likelihood of the client abandoning their shopping cart increases exponentially.

 

• Use Perpetual Shopping Cart System: There are several ways you can motivate the customers to complete their checkout process. Allow them the freedom to check out for each item separately or to club them together in a cart and then to check out for the entire order. Different eCommerce businesses may adopt different strategies in this regard, mainly depending upon their business and organizational structure. Perpetual shopping cart system is one such technique where checkout page is preserved perpetually if the process is not completed. So, when the customer visits your website next time, they may be tempted to eventually complete their shopping experience.

 

• Work with Your Payment Processing Partner: If you run your online payment in collaboration with processing partners then it makes sense to receive expert advice from them. PayTabs can help you in simplifying your payment process and introducing alternative payment options for your clients. As an eCommerce operator, you should ensure that you collaborate with those payment processors who are at the helm of technological innovation. PayTabs is such a payment processor as it deploys latest technologies for making the entire process smoother and hassle free. Thus, eCommerce business owners can bring about exponential improvement in their performance and efficiency by collaborating with

 

• Optimize the Checkout Process: There is no one single way to provide the best services to all your clients. Further, the checkout process also depends on the way your eCommerce business and website are designed. Based on these factors, you may decide to let your customers enjoy a faster checkout with express purchase of individual products, instead of making them collect these items in a shopping cart. At the checkout stage, you may further entice the clients by offering them freebies in the form of discounts, cheaper shipping rates or even free shipping. Discounts may be designed in such a way so that you can tempt the customers to make more purchases to earn higher discounts.

 

With the above methods to improve your checkout page experience, you can bring substantial improvement in your conversion rate and overall efficiency. While most of the measures are internal to any business, external factors such as tying up with the right kind of payment processor may also have magnifying impact on your bottom line.