5 Reasons Why Website Visitors Don't Checkout

Anyone who’s built and maintained a successful e-commerce site knows it takes a lot of hard work to bring a store online and convert visitors to customers. First, we have to deal with server configurations, choosing the right software and customizing it to fit all the business needs, building the catalog, optimizing everything for search engines and user experience. Then all the post-launch marketing processes come into play, like link building, buying the right traffic, A/B split testing. After all that effort has been put into bringing the website online it can become easily discouraging to watch your analytics data only to see that visitors come to your store and don’t checkout. Today we’ll look at the top 5 reasons why your website visitors fail to become valuable clients.

Guest checkout is not enabled

I think I speak for all website owners in saying that we’d love to have as much information about our clients when they buy from us. It makes post-sale marketing easier – which is great, because we want to turn them into loyal, repeat buyers. Many potential customers don’t want to keep track of yet another login or fear that by registering they’ll get insane amounts of promotional emails – or they simply aren’t interested in the benefits of registering with your website. Having all your customer’s information is great, but not at the expense of losing a sale. Forcing visitors to register an account is just enough to discourage them from continuing the checkout process altogether.

Lengthy / multiple page checkout process

In all but the rarest cases, a single page checkout is going to outperform a multipage or long-form checkout process. Using a single page checkout can increase your conversion rates by as much as 21.8%. Just like this paragraph, keep your checkout process short, simple, and to the point.

Unclear or Missing calls to action (CTA)

Engaging design is great and can definitely be the key to separating your online store from your competitors.  You should certainly invest in high-resolution product images, writing detailed product descriptions, and adding additional product specs – but if you’re not actively asking for a sale or making your calls to action obvious on the page visitors are less likely to complete the action you’re wanting them to take.

Distractions during checkout

Once you have a visitor in the checkout funnel, let them checkout! This is not the place to have banner images promoting a summer sale or introducing a new product. Eliminate sidebars, graphics, popups and any other page elements that could distract a visitor from entering their information and clicking the “Complete Checkout” button. Use other tactics like email marketing and product review requests to re-engage customers after the sale.

Pages load slowly

Your site may look amazing and have all the latest bells and whistles – but it could be possible all those new whizbang gadgets are increasing your page load times and causing frustration for your visitors. It’s a fact, the longer a page takes to load, the less likely a visitor will hang around to complete the checkout process. In a perfect world all pages should load in 2-3 seconds (even encrypted checkout pages), any longer and your conversion rates drop drastically.

Conclusion

You put alot time, energy, and resources into you e-commerce website, but overlooking any of these five pointers could be the reason visitors leave your online store before completing the checkout process. If you have any questions about these tips or need help putting any of these changes in place for your website just give the We Got That team a call today.