The eCommerce industry is expected to grow year over year. In 2018, the eCommerce market in the United States racked in $504 billion. Just how are you going to get a slice of that pie, if you’re an eCommerce merchant? Limiting checkout friction and reliable payment processing merchant services are just two of the most crucial factors for a successful eCommerce sale. Traditional and eCommerce customers hate waiting in lines, so having a streamlined checkout process and a merchant account that accepts credit card and electronic payments are essential to fueling the industry.
Digital trade and the impact of internet-enabled devices are changing the way consumers research products and shop. Making it easier to browse products and purchase online can help you to stay a leg up on the competition and customer loyalty, and, of course, sales. By making it easier for shoppers to pay by eliminating checkout friction, increasing consumer confidence and removing payment declines, you can increase sales for your site by as much as 42%.
But how do you know if your clients are experiencing voucher checkout on your site? What do my shoppers need to feel confident? And can you know what is currently causing payment declines? By first identifying the issues resulting in this slowdown in the checkout process, distrust and payment decline triggers you can create a plan for remediation and increased earnings.
Checkout Friction, Consumer Confidence, and Payment Declines Are Losing You Actual Money
Checkout friction is generally the reason shoppers abandon a shopping cart before a purchase is completed and can be brought on by a number of factors such as:
Too Many Steps/Fields — Do shoppers really need to enter their address four times to create a purchase?
Local Currency is not Displayed — Your shoppers want to know what they are really paying.
Restricted Payment Alternatives — (i.e., pockets or alternative payment types are not available).
Customer assurance
Local Language — If shoppers can’t read your webpage, adios!
Security Logos and Badges
No Coupons — Some customer don’t buy if a discount or coupon is offered
Payment processing declines, on the other hand, occur post-sale and happen after the shopper has hit the “purchase” button. Payment processing declines can happen for a plethora of reasons. Most often they are due to:
One Bank Connection — If you are linked to just one bank, international transactions are not as likely to be accepted. Links to international banks are key to conversions.
Retries & Failovers — With multiple connections to banks, you can see an uplift of 3% with failovers.
Aggressive Fraud Rules — Be sure to have proactively designed fraud rules, and are remaining current with the most recent fraud patterns so you can avoid false positives.
Currency Mismatch — Processing trades in local currency can increase conversions up to 10%.
Large Transaction Amounts — By breaking up big payments such as vouchers into monthly or quarterly transactions as opposed to yearly transactions, you can decrease the chance that the payment triggers a fraud alert.
Together payment processing declines and checkout friction combine to create what is called the Checkout Abandonment Problem. And most eCommerce merchants don’t even realize what causes it. Fortunately, there’s a report which outlines the areas that are currently causing the most friction for more than 650 retailers.
The CCI shows the site features measures the friction that they trigger and that are responsible for creating problems. Having shopped over 650 U.S.-based eCommerce sites of all sizes across 14 merchant classes (who account for at least 70 percent of U.S. eCommerce spend), the CCI was able to identify more than 50 attributes which were used to score retailers on how easy (or difficult ) it was going from discovery to market on their website.
The Checkout Conversion Index (CCI)
The CCI reveals the website attributes that are most responsible for creating problems during the shopping process and measures the friction that they cause. Having shopped over 650 U.S.-based eCommerce sites of all sizes across 14 merchant categories (who account for more than 70 percent of all U.S. eCommerce spend), the CCI was able to identify over 50 attributes that were used to score merchants on how easy (or hard) it was going from discovery to checkout on their site.
What’s in the Index?
Many things were found by the CCI, here are just a few of the findings:
- The very top sites deliver leads to a quick 134 minutes—just over two minutes.
- Size doesn’t matter: the normal Indicator standing between small and massive companies was relatively similar.
- Ninety-three percent of the best sites provide trusted safety logos when checking out to let their customers know they care about their financial data and will protect it.
- The Automotive Parts & Accessories sector came in with the Maximum rating of 91.