Shopify Tips: 5 Things to Remember in Making a Better Checkout Page

You’ve been doing some customer acquisition strategies and it’s been successful so far but you’re wondering why there’s no significant increase in sales. That is something that’s unusual especially if you’re spending a big chunk of your profit in advertising and promotion. When this happens, you need to think of one important thing and that is optimization. Optimizing your shop means making sure that every aspect of it works smoothly.

Everything from its layout down to the product descriptions and every copy that’s there is within your shop, you need to make sure that everything is working at its best. And one of the most important aspects of a shop that needs to be designed to encourage purchase is the checkout section. That is why in this article, we’re going to look into every possible way on how you can optimize Shopify checkout so you can be sure that every visitor actually proceeds to the checkout stage and makes a purchase.

Whether you’re using Shopify for a long time now or you’re still new to it and still need to learn more about this number one e-commerce platform, knowing the tricks in optimizing your checkout remains as an important ingredient in ensuring improved conversion rate and that’s exactly what we’re going to discuss here. But before going to the real meat of the discussion, let’s first learn some interesting statistics about Shopify.

5 Reasons Why Shopify is the Best

Through the years, Shopify has been ruling the list of the top e-commerce platforms and it doesn’t show any signs of declining. There are several reasons why this is so but here are some amazing statistics that will help you make the final decision of picking it as your e-commerce platform of choice.

1. In terms of Market Share, Shopify holds 11 percent overall and it is projected to increase in the coming years

2. There is close to 2 million merchants that are using Shopify for their business. The pandemic has contributed much to this especially because of the increased demand in online shops and the elevated interest in online shopping

3. The years 2019 and 2020 has seen a 52 percent increase in customers who made purchase from merchants that are using Shopify

4. A staggering $319 Billion has been contributed to the Global Economy by Shopify and its merchants

5. Over the years since Shopify ever came into the e-commerce space, its overall profit has increased by over 47 percent

There are still a lot of other facts about Shopify that makes it the top contender in the best e-commerce platform contest but we’ll leave the details for our next tutorial. Now, it’s time for us to proceed to the main topic so you can learn how to optimize Shopify checkout.

Shopify Checkout Optimization

Abandoned carts and busted orders are two main contributors to a Shopify store’s loss. And there are several reasons why customers resort to leaving their orders unpaid or simply moving to one of your competitors and make the purchase there instead of doing business with your store. While it is true that there are ways on how you can recover and remind customers about their abandoned transaction, there is nothing that would equal the benefits that an optimized checkout can offer. Here are some simple things that you can do to ensure that every customer who lands on your website actually converts into a successful sale.

1. Make it Simple

Simplicity remains as one of the best techniques in making websites run and load fast. When there are fewer images or any other object to load in a particular page, the time it takes to have everything displayed is significantly reduced. Employing simplicity doesn’t mean making a page boring but instead, it means using smaller size files and an overall design that doesn’t need much resource to load. When it comes to your checkout page, make sure to remove any unnecessary image and just put the things that your customer needs to fill out, tick, and click in order to make and pay for an order.

2. Give Clear Instructions

Avoid giving vague and indirect instructions in your shop’s checkout page. Ask for the customer’s given name, middle name or middle initial, surname, address, etc. in a direct manner and use direct words as much as possible. This will help make the checkout process a lot better especially for those who are in a hurry and the other ones who already got their information in AutoFill. A simple checkout form works best every time. Some shops even require customers to create their own account upon checkout so that the next time they place an order, they won’t need to fill out the same information again.

Encouraging customers to create their very own account will not only help them avoid the extra filling out steps but will also allow them access to information such as order tracking, and faster customer support. But the important thing that you need to ensure that you’re doing is to give clear instructions both in account creation and for any other steps that the customer needs to go through in order to experience a faster and better checkout experience.

3. Remove Any Object That Can Cause Distractions

Never enable any ads or pop-up messages in your checkout page. You may be displaying those with a good purpose in mind but it can end up working on the contrary and decrease your checkout rate instead. Customers don’t want any distractions while they’re doing their thing and in fact, a large number of netizens don’t really like the ads that suddenly appears while they’re watching YouTube videos or those that interrupt their FB watch sessions.

The same thing happens when you suddenly display something distractive in your shop’s checkout page. That is why it’s important that you avoid doing this and instead, just leave things as is or maybe do some minor improvements to make it work better.

4. Avoid Anything That Can Cause Anxiety

If you really want your customers to make a purchase, you need to make sure that they are most relaxed during the checkout process. This is the stage where they’ll be inputting some sensitive data into the checkout page so minimizing anxiety is crucial. Remove anything that creates confusion, fear, or cause your customers to develop distrust towards your product or brand. Don’t display things like customer reviews and other related stuff within your checkout page to avoid any cancelled checkout or abandoned carts.

5. Implement the Best Layout

You can’t get any further in terms of sales and profit if you don’t make sure that your shop’s checkout page is designed well. Its layout should encourage customers to really purchase and pay for the items that they placed in their cart. There are several types of layout that will work for different types of business but there’s a universal one that truly works and it is Shopify’s default checkout page. Make sure that you give your checkout page the best layout and the rest will simply fall into place.

Conclusion

The checkout page is one of the most important components of every Shopify business and making it simple and direct is crucial. It is where customers would stay for a relatively longer time as they make the final decision on whether to pay or abandon. That is why it’s important that you follow the 5 tips that we’ve shared above to ensure that checkout works at its best. Purchases are your business’s life line that’s if you need to implement as much techniques as possible both to protect your shop and to optimize your checkout page. Once you’re done with these improvements, gathering more customers and securing more purchases will surely be easier.

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