Checking out might make customers check out/Business

[Guest guest]

Interview: Mike Baxter on checkout best practice

 

*E-consultancy this week publishes its Online Retail Checkout Special

Report<http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/online-retail-checkout-2007>,

a

must-read for e-commerce site owners who want to understand how they can

reduce abandonment rates. *

 

Here, *Dr Mike Baxter <http://www.saleslogiq.com/>*, the author, talks about

some of the key issues and problem areas associated with checkouts - and

some of the 'quick wins' for etailers.

 

*Why did you focus on checkout design and processes for our annual Online

Retail

report<http://www.e-consultancy.com/publications/online-retail-checkout-2007>

?*

 

The obvious answer is that there is a huge need for information and advice

about improving checkout. E-commerce sites are losing roughly half their

customers through basket and checkout abandonment.

 

Retailers recognise the problem – they just struggle to know how to fix it.

Which brings me to our second reason for looking at checkout. In both our

consultancy and our benchmarking research, we've found checkout a real

challenge. We could see lots of specific things wrong with checkout but

always felt the 'big picture' was missing.

 

Is there an inherent logic behind the checkout process? How do the elements

of checkout relate to the whole process? How do the customer's interests

relate to / conflict with the retailers' and how do we reconcile them?

 

And what exactly is it that goes so badly wrong in checkout to make half the

customers walk away? So we thought we would take a step back from the detail

and try to provide some more strategic thinking about the checkout process

and how it relates to the entire customer journey.

 

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*People often quote dreadful checkout abandonment rates: is it really that

bad? *

 

In general, yes it is! We quote two survey results from 2006 in the report:

they found 46% and 60% abandonment rates respectively. Now, these covered

abandonment from both the basket and checkout but earlier surveys have

suggested that most of this (between two thirds and four fifths) is during

checkout.

 

Interestingly, one of the surveys also gave a breakdown in the range of

abandonment rates. Some retailers report as little as 10% abandonment,

whereas others report more than 80%. This probably reflects differences in

underlying factors such as: brand loyalty, time invested in making the

purchasing choice, availability of alternative suppliers etc.

 

The key conclusion, however, is that a 50% abandonment rate is not simply

something you have to live with. It can be significantly reduced. Case

studies suggest a 10-15% reduction can be achieved through redesign,

split-testing or a combination of the two.

 

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*Why do customers commonly drop out of the purchase process? Actually, this

question assumes they are 'in' the purchase process – that's part of the

problem isn't it?*

 

Customers appear to have a clear distinction in their mind between shopping

and buying. On the one hand they need to find out what is available, how the

different alternative products compare and what different retailers are

offering in terms of price, delivery, store pick-up etc.

 

This is shopping and it is different from buying: in the customer's mind

buying is the bit that happens after the shopping decision is made. " *I've

decided what I want, now let me pay for it and get hold of it! " *

 

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*A key section of the report examines the difference between purchase

proposition and transaction. This seems to be confusing many e-commerce

firms judging by their websites, right?*

 

This was one of the biggest surprises from our research. On the face of it,

e-commerce sites seem well designed to meet the distinct shopping and buying

needs of the customer.

 

During the shopping phase, they can search, browse and compare products,

then once they've decided what to buy they can add-to-basket and checkout.

When we dug a little deeper, however, it became clear that retailers are not

making a clear enough distinction between the 'proposition' - what exactly

is the full offer to the customer - and the transaction - the completion of

the sale.

 

This forces the customer to start the checkout process to discover details

of the proposition - is the product in stock, when will it be delivered, can

I pay by PayPal? In the report we make 32 recommendations on how the

proposition should be made clear to the customer on the category, product

and basket pages. On average the top UK retailers failed to comply with half

of them.

 

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*What are the common mistakes you're seeing in this area? *

 

Incomplete delivery details continue to cause the most widespread problems.

Knowing when your purchase will arrive and what the total cost is (including

delivery) is such a fundamental part of the purchase proposition that it

should be prominently shown on the basket page (if not before).

 

This sort if information should never be buried in a delivery terms and

conditions page accessed by a tiny link in a page footer! For many online

customers, specific delivery conditions are a critical part of the

proposition (can timed or evening/weekend delivery be arranged, is there a

guaranteed latest delivery date e.g. for a birthday or anniversary?).

 

Of the 12 top UK retail sites we benchmarked, only two passed the

requirement for delivery date/period to be shown clearly in the basket page.

 

 

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*The report has a section on basket design – can you provide an overview of

the key problem areas?*

 

Again it's a question of ensuring that all elements of the purchase

proposition have been made by the time the customer hits the 'go to

checkout' button. We have suggested 20 items that should be included on the

basket page to fully describe the product, price, delivery, payment and

registration propositions.

 

In addition to this there are some pretty simple ways to fix some

frustrating usability problems, such as giving customers options to navigate

away from the basket, and ensuring that the positioning and format of

controls are both clear and intuitive.

 

We are also seeing increasing use of mini-baskets, and while they can be

used to great effect, either with or without a link to a full-page basket,

they can create their own usability problems, such as allowing customers to

see when and what they have added to their basket – a problem that can be

overcome with the creative use of transitional effects.

 

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*This report includes ten pages of design patterns, to help steer e-commerce

companies towards best practice, and lower abandonment rates. Can you sum up

the thinking here? *

 

We hope that when a retailer has the opportunity to undertake a complete

re-design of their site, they will take the time to read the whole report

and think strategically about how checkout fits into the entire customer

experience.

 

We are also very aware that many retailers, however, are forced to take

smaller bites at improving their checkout and hence need more of checklist

of things to consider. So, our design patterns give a checklist of 'what'

to consider when reviewing or re-designing the checkout.

 

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*What represents the lowest hanging fruit in terms of quick fixes?*

 

The fruitiest, although perhaps not the lowest hanging is to start online

split testing elements of your checkout process. Anyone who has been within

earshot of me for the past few months will probably have heard me predicting

huge performance differences between e-commerce sites that split test

compared to those that don't.

 

The checkout is a no-brainer when it comes to split-testing: think of ways

you might be able to change the checkout process and split-test it to see if

the effect is significant. After the first improvement, split-test again and

again until you exhaust all your ideas for improvement – by which time you

will probably have knocked at least 10% off your checkout conversion losses.

 

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*We hosted a roundtable to discuss the findings of the research. What kind

of feedback did you get?*

 

The response was great! We had a lot more attendees than we had chairs for

them to sit on - not bad for a Friday afternoon. As always, when you get

senior people together from the major online retailers, there was lots of

vigorous debate but David Williams, E-commerce Manager from Charles

Tyrwhitt<http://www.ctshirts.co.uk/> said

everything I needed to hear: " *Probably the most comprehensive report I

have read on the minefield that is the checkout process – it presents the

balance needed between what the customer expects and the retailer wants to

complete a transaction*. "

 

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*Which companies have been named and shamed in the new report?*

 

As you know we don't do naming and shaming – we offer constructive

criticisms of the different practices employed by the different top UK

e-tailers [smile]. The sites we reviewed systematically included: Amazon,

Argos, Comet, Currys, Debenhams, John Lewis, Marks and Spencer, Next, PC

World, Next, Tesco and Woolworths.

 

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*And which ones are doing well?*

 

… equally, nobody is perfect, but for some good ideas on a logical and

pretty comprehensive layout for checkout, have a look at Comet and for an

innovative (albeit not quite complete) approach to enclosing the checkout

process, see Play.com.

 

 

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Cheers!

Kathleen Petrides

The Woobey Queen

Http://www.woobeyworld.com

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Kathleen-

 

 

This (these) article was very informative and I immediately went to

my cart software and looked for ways to improve!

 

thank you!

 

Nikki

www.gabrielsaunt.com

 

On Jun 21, 2007, at 10:00 AM, Kathleen Petrides wrote:

 

> The obvious answer is that there is a huge need for information and

> advice

> about improving checkout. E-commerce sites are losing roughly half

> their

> customers through basket and checkout abandonment.

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

As a frequent online shopper, I'd say this article is spot-on.

 

jaime,CA