Checkout Problems and Abandoned Carts – Ways to Reduce Abandoned Carts

Ecommerce checkout problems and abandoned carts are prevalent. At a staggering 81% cart abandonment rate on mobile, they show no sign of getting better. Bad checkouts contribute to abandoned carts and incomplete purchases—which is why it’s more crucial than ever before to know how to improve checkout flow (and, in turn, reduce your number of abandoned carts.)

The Problem With Online Checkouts

Often, online checkouts are clunky at best.

Why? It boils down to two words: bad user experience—or “UX design” for short.

The most common user design-related problems with the online checkout process include:

• Long shipping wait times
• Surprise shipping costs
• Asking for user information multiple times

Consumers are demanding easier checkout processes, however ecommerce has been slow to respond.

mcommerce vs. ecommerce

To dive deeper into how to reduce cart abandonment, we have to define mcommerce vs. ecommerce.

Mcommerce is the use of mobile devices (like tablets or smartphones) to purchase and sell goods. Ecommerce, on the other hand, is an umbrella term for methods used to purchase, sell, and/or exchange goods via the Internet.

When it comes to mcommerce checkout times, many apps have long checkout times that require multiple clicks. PayPal, for example, requires upwards of three clicks and can take over 30 seconds to process payments depending on which payment method you’ve selected (and up to five days when it comes to transferring funds).

Similarly, Apple Pay requires a minimum of two clicks to use as payment and can take over 10 seconds to process, depending on your Internet connection (if the merchant in question even accepts Apple Pay, that is).

These lags are a significant contributor to cart abandonment. With even the best of class being slow to process payments, it’s a small wonder why m-commerce cart abandonment rates are so high.

That’s why at Parrot, we are releasing a brand-new checkout option in May 2022: to ensure that your customers can, in just one click, have their payments processed in under two seconds.

Checkout Speeds and Processes

The average checkout process in America as of 2021 had over 23 form elements.

That’s over 23 lists, prompts, buttons, forms, or questions that slowed down a customer’s journey from item selection to checkout—often to the point where the customer abandons their purchase completely.

With businesses losing as much as $18 billion in yearly sales revenue due to shopping cart abandonment thanks to long, clunky checkout processes, it’s in your best interest to improve checkout flow and speed ASAP.

Improving Online Shopping Experiences

Now that you know why you should be improving checkout flow let’s move on to how.

Common tactics to smooth out a clunky checkout process include, but aren’t limited to:

• Creating an easy-to-edit cart (rather than having customers start over if they want to delete an item from their lineup)
• Featuring transparent pricing
• Using a progress indicator to showcase how far along a customer is in their checkout

Some of our top-recommended elements here at Parrot are using a one-step checkout process via a Buy Now button, optimizing your landing page for speed, and recommending multiple items be bought together.

3 Ways to Reduce Abandoned Carts

Osa Gaius, our founder, has three rules for reducing abandoned cart rates.

1. Examine the customer journey. This means logging in to your own e-commerce site, buying an item, and seeing how long and convenient the process is. What isn’t intuitive? What takes the longest to load? What forms feel cumbersome or repetitive? Experiencing your own checkout as a customer first-hand is crucial to understanding what’s working in your checkout process and what isn’t.
2. Optimize your UX for mobile. With mobile being the number one way people shop, not optimizing your UX for mobile devices means leaving money on the table. One way merchants can achieve this is by building their own mobile applications to ensure that the process is optimized from start to finish. However, this is not financially feasible for every merchant.
3. Use Parrot. When comparing Parrot to other applications, Parrot is faster, more convenient, more secure, and more cost-effective than the alternatives. Parrot does not use third-party apps to collect payments, simplifies data and analytics, and integrates with your favorite tools (like Stripe and Klaviyo) to ensure that your team and your customers are happy.
   
   

Try Parrot For Free Today

With so much revenue being generated via mcommerce, merchants can no longer afford not to have optimized checkout flow.

While common UX problems like clunky checkouts or long processes are a significant cause of cart abandonment, there are multiple avenues you can take to guarantee your customers a smooth purchasing experience.

Ready to simplify cart abandonment reduction? Sign up for Parrot today to see the difference one-click payments can make.

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