Some customers turn away if the checkout process itself is problematic to them. There are several possible causes of a poor checkout experience.

Lagging During Checkout

If checkout is extremely slow, you’re likely to lose all but the most dedicated customers. If your checkout loads slowly or lags when the customer clicks, this usually comes down to poor programming or design of your eCommerce website, or poor performance of the server on which your website resides. These problems are much more common on self-hosted eCommerce platforms, in which you’re responsible for hosting and software updates. Other possible causes are large unoptimized graphics, bad programming, or inefficient coding of your shopping cart’s design — like badly-implemented CSS, the code that defines how a website looks.

The best solution for a slow checkout is to use a hosted eCommerce platform with full technical support and reliable, fast server speeds. This takes the job of maintaining the software off your hands and ensures that your online store will be hosted properly. Good programming is also a must, as is efficient theme coding, so your shopping cart won’t be bogged down by errors that make your checkout pages load slowly. 3dcart fits all these criteria and maintains rigorous standards for site speed and efficiency.

Confusing Checkout Procedures

If your checkout pages aren’t laid out properly, you’ll have customers becoming confused as they look to add their shipping and billing information, or even as they look for the final Check Out button. If the customer can’t fill out all the proper fields on their first try, and they end up missing a required piece of information somewhere, they’ll be annoyed when they click “Check Out” only to be told they didn’t fill out all the required information. If the Check Out button itself is in the wrong place, they may not be able to find it before they decide to give up.

Your checkout pages are not the place for creativity. Customers expect everything to be in an obvious location, so keep it straightforward.

User-Unfriendly or Difficult Checkouts

The checkout process should only take a few seconds. Even if your online store works perfectly, you can still have an unfriendly checkout or a checkout that’s difficult to use.

If your checkout requires customers to fill out information on several different pages, they’ll get tired of the process. Likewise, if they have to enter information repeatedly, they may decide it’s not worth the bother. Give your customers the option to use their shipping information as their billing information so they don’t have to enter it twice. Also consider implementing a single-page checkout.

Another checkout usability problem crops up if the customer is trying to shop from a mobile device but your store isn’t designed to be mobile-friendly (aka responsive). It’s hard to navigate a non-responsive website on mobile, and even more difficult to go through a checkout. Today, you simply can’t survive as an eCommerce merchant with a non-responsive website, so only use responsive design. Not only is it far easier for your customers, it also gets you an SEO boost.

3dcart provides the option for a single-page checkout as well as tons of optimized, mobile-ready themes that will give your customers the ideal checkout experience right out of the box.