Reducing eCommerce Checkout Problems – How you Can Remove Friction

It’s true: decreasing friction within the buying process is the number one way to reduce abandoned carts or ecommerce checkout problems.

While text marketing’s clickthrough rate is phenomenal (at 98%, while email marketing messages have only a 22% clickthrough rate), it has the lowest checkout completion rates out of any digital channel. Why is this? It’s because of the amount of friction the average mobile shopper encounters while trying to complete a purchase via mobile.

In this blog, we’ll be outlining why shoppers abandon their carts, common hurdles they face after clicking on your text campaigns, and actionable steps for how merchants (like you) can eliminate ecommerce checkout problems for good.

Why Do Shoppers Abandon Their Carts?

Mobile commerce (otherwise known as “mcommerce”) is estimated to:

• Make up 42.9% of ecommerce as of 2024
• Exceed $553.28 billion by 2024
• Account for 44.2% of all retail sales in the U.S. starting in 2025

Mobile commerce has endless sales potential, but have you thought about what happens after customers click on your text message or buy now button?

Mobile purchases trail behind their desktop counterparts on most mobile commerce (mcommerce) platforms. Why? Because mobile purchasing traditionally has had numerous hurdles for consumers to overcome. That means merchants need to remove these common pain points, so their audience has a seamless, frictionless buying experience.

Common ecommerce Checkout Problems

The most common of these hurdles include, but aren’t limited to:

Pop-ups and Other Bad UX Components

UX stands for “User Experience.” Getting it right is your first step to ensuring your customers complete their mobile checkout process. Good UX in mobile payments is crucial, and it’s been historically bad.

Examples of bad UX components are:

• Pop-ups, like Text discount codes which spam your customers with unwanted ads and cheesy discounts and slow them down on their way to your checkout
• Hidden navigation, meaning that your customers can’t easily find your “Contact Us,” “Checkout,” and “Shop” pages
• A slow-loading checkout that prompts people to quit out of frustration
• Forms that ask for info multiple times or fields that aren’t recognized

We could go on.

At Parrot, we believe that your customer’s journey from add-to-cart to checkout should be as short and easy as possible. One click or action. Keep yours as quick, simple, and intuitive as possible to minimize cart abandonment.

Complicated Checkout Processes

On a screen as small as your smartphone, a long checkout process can feel even more tedious than when completing it on a desktop.

Can this be resolved? Yes. Merchants should include the availability of mobile-first sites (or a dedicated mobile app). They can also use alternative payment methods like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and/or PayPal that use saved payment details to make it easier for consumers to quickly move through the checkout process on their mobile device.

Mistakes that merchants commonly make that result in their checkout process being overly complicated include:

• Not displaying the most important product information first
• Not using a progress indicator during checkout
• Not using auto-fill forms

A Lack of Payment Security

Mobile commerce payment security means that the checkout forms that collect your customers’ data are hosted securely and consistently, whether self-hosted on your business’s dedicated servers or hosted by your payment provider.

To be considered secure, this information must be encrypted during transmission, with all stored payment information being protected after the purchase is completed.

As one of the top reasons for cart abandonment, you can reduce the friction a lack of payment security causes by having an SSL certificate with HTTPS (or an Extended Validation SSL Certificate) visible. Your customers can immediately see that their data is in safe hands.

Eliminate Ecommerce Checkout Problems With These Three Tips

If you’re a merchant wondering how you can reduce friction from the buying process for your mobile customers, look no further than these three tips.

1. Start with an end-to-end assessment of your own process: what is working about your checkout process? When do most customers drop off before checkout? By analyzing your internal data, interviewing existing customers, and accepting and committing to fixing the clunky parts, you can better pinpoint what aspects of your checkout process have too much friction.
2. Eliminate distractions: because mobile devices have a finite amount of screen space, the amount of the screen each portion of your checkout process takes up is essential. If you have too much information, too many options, and/or unclear directions, customers may abandon their cart due to boredom or confusion.
3. Link internally, not to external sources: with the already high risk of mobile commerce customers abandoning their cart midway through the checkout process, linking to external sources further prompts your buyers to leave your page with their order unfinished. We recommend keeping all FAQs, customer service options, and upsells internal.

A great example of a straightforward checkout process is Pink Horse Power, who harnessed a blend of strategic text marketing and a frictionless checkout journey to generate $1300 in just four hours.

Text Platforms as a Solution to Reducing Friction Within the Buying Process

While leveraging the sales potential of mobile commerce may be tempting, the elephant in the room is that most businesses simply haven’t been able to get the completion rates to make it worthwhile.

Customers want to use their phone as a wallet: they want to receive a long-anticipated text marketing message from you and be through your checkout in two minutes or less. However, most customers encounter long loading times, a confusing checkout process, and too much friction to make it worth their while when paying via their smartphone.

The most common hurdles are:

• Bad UX choices, like pop-ups or text discounts
• A complicated checkout process
• Endless on-page distractions that make checking out a chore

Parrot’s one-click payments and secure CC storage fixes these common pain points. We remove friction from your buying process by being the only text platform that stores credit card info for one-click payments, turning your customers’ five-minute wait time into under a second.

Connect your existing store, add your products, launch your next campaign, and interact frictionlessly with customers.

Try Parrot today and experience how much easier mobile shopping can be.

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