How to Give Customers a 5-Star Checkout Experience

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5-Star Customer Experience.

IMAGE SOURCE – Adobe Stock

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Are you giving your customers a 5-star checkout experience when they visit your website? If not, you may be missing out on countless sales and engagement opportunities.

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, online shoppers have more options than ever before. Creating a delightful experience for people who decide to interact with your website is a vital step in establishing and retaining your customer base.

The checkout process is particularly important because it’s the last step a visitor goes through before they become a customer. If a user is unhappy with your product or the process they must go through to place an order; you can expect to see a high churn rate and low satisfaction scores.

Fortunately, there are plenty of small but meaningful ways to fine-tune your checkout process and create a memorable 5-star experience for your customers.

Today, I’ll share several actionable strategies you can implement on your website. If used correctly, these checkout tips can help you boost sales, build trust with your audience, and improve customer satisfaction.

Let’s dive in!

Remove Surprise Costs

Did you know that around 56% of shoppers will leave an online store mid-purchase if unexpected costs appear on the checkout page? This startling statistic highlights the importance of removing surprise costs from your checkout flow.

Imagine how you would feel if you thought your order would cost $50, only to see it jump to $80 when it’s time to pay. Odds are, you’d feel annoyed, a little confused, and probably question whether you should place the order. After all, why would you pay nearly 50% of the original cost on top of what you expected to pay?

The easiest way to get past this problem is to adjust the price per product and offer everyone free shipping. This strategy allows people to see exactly what they’ll pay when they make it to your checkout page.

If you can’t remove shipping costs, make sure you at least include them in the product’s price. Avoiding unnecessary surprises, like additional costs, will result in more happy customers and a better experience.

Expand Cart Management Options

Another problem that’s bound to put a damper on your checkout process is poor cart management options. We’ve all visited an eCommerce store and added a few items to our cart, only to decide to remove something towards the end of the process.

In my experience, the best thing to do in this situation is let customers manage their shopping cart, regardless of where they are on your site. If users see a bundle that includes something they’ve already added to their shopping cart, they can simply hit the remove button on the old product and add the new bundle.

This strategy is a perfect example of a small but vital change all businesses can make. You don’t want to put your customers in a situation where they must navigate to a different page to manage their virtual shopping cart. Letting users make these choices from anywhere on your site will definitely improve their shopping experience and result in more repeat customers.

Create Personalized Offers

Showing personalized offers is a terrific way to connect with your audience and secure more sales. Over 80% of shoppers claim they are more likely to engage with a business that presents personalized promotions based on how they engage with the site.

For example, if you have a suite of marketing SaaS tools, and a prospect is only reading blog posts that pertain to email marketing, you can trigger a popup that features a special promotion on your email software.

Developing and understanding buyer personas is the key to correctly personalizing offers for people who haven’t yet joined your email list. Use what you know about each subset of customers to trigger personalized popups based on specific interactions.

If someone has joined your lead list, you can send them offers based on their preferences.
I suggest experimenting with different promotions and discounts so you can find relevant, value-packed offers for your customers.

Improve Your Checkout Page

Now, let’s discuss how and why you should improve your checkout page. Simply put, a checkout page is where users enter their information and finalize their order.

You need to do everything you can to ensure your customers can smoothly and easily make it through this part of the process.

One important tip every business owner should remember is mobile optimization is a must. In the United States, 58% of all internet traffic comes from smartphones. If your checkout page looks sloppy or doesn’t load correctly on mobile devices, you will experience a higher cart abandonment rate and decreased satisfaction.

The best way to accomplish this task is to use a page builder that allows you to create a mobile and desktop version of your site. Extensively test your payment page and order form before it goes live so you can keep more customers engaged.

Speaking of order forms, I recommend trimming unnecessary questions from your form and adding a progress bar so users know exactly how long it will take to complete their purchase.

Streamlining your checkout page makes your site easier to navigate and more accessible to a wider audience, which typically translates to happier customers.

Show Customer Reviews

You’ll have a better chance of giving customers a 5-star experience if they trust your brand before they hand over their debit card information.

If someone feels shaky about your company’s integrity, they may avoid placing an order, even if they’ve added something to their shopping cart. You can prevent this unfortunate situation by adding social proof to your checkout page and other parts of your site.

Social proof is evidence that other shoppers and businesses trust your company. The thought process is, “If everyone else trusts this company, I should too!”

You’ll be glad to know it’s easier than ever to build trust with your audience through social proof.
In my experience, showing users reviews is the best proof that your brand is trustworthy. A whopping 88% of consumers say they trust reviews from strangers just as much as they would a personal recommendation.

When people see that others spent their hard-earned money and had a positive experience, they imagine they’ll have a similar experience.

I suggest allowing users to leave reviews on your product pages and highlighting glowing reviews on your product landing page and checkout page. This one small step will greatly improve customer confidence, which means a better experience with your brand.

Highlight Customer Support Options

A big problem that dampers many customer experiences is a lack of support options. Think about how you would feel if you were ready to buy a new piece of tech but wanted to ask a few questions first. After scouring the page, you can’t find a link to a support agent or chatbot.

Finally, you discover they do have a support channel, but no one is around to help until tomorrow.

Would you go through with the order? Most people wouldn’t. It’s understandable when you think about it. Money is a precious commodity. Shoppers are not willing to throw money to the wind and hope that your company gets it right.

You can overcome this problem with your business by using a hybrid system that involves live agents and chatbots. Your live chat team can help customers with complicated questions and help them determine which product is right for them. Meanwhile, the chatbots can assist users with common questions or concerns.

It’s important to use both support options for several reasons. For one thing, adding chatbots to your site will free up time and allow your agents to help customers more effectively. There’s a good reason 64% of business owners say chatbots help them provide fast, personalized customer support.

Chatbots are also nice to have around because they work 24/7. If you don’t have a live team that’s always available, chatbots can help most users with their questions and help them feel confident when they click the “place order” button on your payment page.

Follow Up After The Order

The last topic I want to talk about today is following up with customers after they place an order. Many marketers think their customers hit the bottom of the sales funnel after they place an order. I’m here to tell you that this is far from the truth.

If you want to build long-lasting relationships with your customers, you must go out of your way to build rapport with your audience and ensure they have the best experience possible.

Following up is a great way to see if your products or services meet their expectations. This situation will also allow you to provide clarification and walk users through questions they have about their order.

We deliver an automated email series to customers a few weeks after they place their order. Depending on how each subscriber responds, our customer success team will reach out and see if we can do anything to elevate their experience.

This part of the process is vital for improving your retention rate and showing customers that you want to do everything possible to give them a 5-star experience.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, giving your customers a top-notch experience takes time, emotional intelligence, and a desire to innovate and improve your website. The strategies outlined today will help you build rapport with first-time visitors and turn them into happy, loyal customers.

Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

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