Checkout conversion optimization 101:

‍

Get the basics in place

• Study your customer behavior regularly: Utilize customer behavior to understand their preferences and motivations. 
• Communicate Regularly: Stay connected with customers through newsletters, emails, calls or surveys. Understand feedback on the website through these channels from time to time.
• Experiment and Adapt: Be open to testing different checkout strategies as customer behavior changes. Learn from these experiments and adapt accordingly.
• Analyze with Data: Make decisions backed by data such as conversion rates and shopping cart abandonment rates. Compare your performance with industry standards and competitors to identify gaps and implement best practices.

What data sources are ​​available?

Website-related

‍

1. Shopify
2. Google Analytics
3. Any other analytical platform (e.g. Lucky Orange for video recordings, Mixpanel or Clevertap for behavior analytics)

‍

‍Checkout-specific

‍

1. Shopflo
2. Your payment gateway dashboard

‍

What’s the correct way to analyze?
‍

Find out what’s wrong: 

Identify the step: What part of the conversion funnel is looking off?

• Split funnel as much as possible - by steps (If the decline in sales is also accompanied with a decline in sessions, it's perhaps because of you running marketing differently during the said days. If the sessions look fine, check for add-to-cart events. They are a proxy for intent-to-buy. If the ATC is declining, the quality of offer/ product/ audience is most probably to blame. Also check whether your abandoned checkouts are correctly working.)
• Keep regular benchmarks in mind when you're comparing - e.g. yearly or monthly averages, competitive benchmarks etc.
• Account for seasonality-led variations in your business (e.g. it might not make sense to compare your checkout funnel performance on a weekend vs how it was on a weekday)

‍

Slice and dice: Can we point it to a specific cause?

• Split funnel by campaign source/medium: Is the anomaly spotted across all sources of checkout (direct/organic, Google, Facebook)? If that's the case, we could point it to an audience segment gone wrong. (Note: See if the campaign was a top-of-funnel or bottom-of-funnel campaign)
• Optional: You can also check GA data to understand whether the anomaly could stem from a specific device or browser based usage.
• Try to use the date-picker widget to trace the duration in which the impact shows up in the numbers. Once that's clear, check with your team if it coincides with any change made on the online store e.g. discounts run, apps installed, cart widgets added, landing page changed etc.

Experiment & iterate: Perform A/B testing

• Continuously testing and optimizing your checkout process is essential for improving conversion rates. Shopflo's analytics can help you understand which aspects of your checkout process are working well and which need improvement. A/B testing different elements like discounts, payment method reordering, button colors, call-to-action wording, or layout can lead to valuable insights.
• Optimizing your checkout conversion requires a blend of user-centric design, strategic marketing, and meticulous testing. Implementing these steps can help you decrease cart abandonment, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately, enhance your store's profitability. Remember, optimization is a continuous process—always keep exploring ways to make the purchasing journey smoother for your customers.

‍

Control the knobs

Basis the investigation above, once you have spotted where the issue is (and ascertained that it is clearly attributable to the checkout), you can make use of the Shopflo platform to create an impact in your checkout funnel. We will now detail out some examples of what you could change to control different parts of the funnel:

^{💡 -> experiment & iterate}

If some of these features are not available to you yet, please contact support@shopflo.com

‍

‍Login rate (Phone number submitted)‍

Reduce friction on login

• Add True caller plugin for reducing steps 
• In case you have a high login rate on your website, you can use Shopflo login app to let customers stay pre-signed into checkout

Increase intent on login

• Highlight discounts in banner text (e.g. user segment-specific discounts or payment offers) on logging in - highlight future reward
• Play around with discount strip configuration (e.g. hide or allow coupon typing on login page)
• Make OTP mandatory to push shoppers to invest effort into checkout to guarantee future retention (experiment for best results)
• Configure automatic discounts on login step that apply to all users

Create trust

• Use trust badges to increase shopper trust towards the brand, product quality and deliverability
• Use banners on login page to convey delivery timelines, guarantees etc.
• Theme your checkout to be a true reflection of your brand (through logo, theme colors, button colors etc.)
• Change your button text to convey next step in a better way 💡

Address submitted → Payments Page

Reduce friction in new address submission

• Configure address form fields (e.g. name, address lines etc. - remove address line 2 if it does not have critical impact on RTO) -
• Note: Measure RTO or fraud addresses. This has a trade off with respect to Address submissions
• Change labels in address form (e.g. guide users better by naming line 2 as "House No. / Flat No.") 
• Make email non-mandatory in case this is what your customer base prefers

Reduce drop-off in the coupon stage

This is where most of the coupon application happens. Ensuring high conversion through discount usage, and minimizing burn is critical here.

• Use the full suite of Shopflo Discount Engine for better coupon experience
• Keep coupon rules simple & edit coupon descriptions to guide customers clearly
• Check discount performance on Shopflo dashboard (you can understand which coupon application is failing the most & solve for specific issues)
• Note: Do check % conversions with discounts vs. % conversions without discounts on your Overview tab so ensure whether discounting is working in favor of conversion or not
• Experiment with order & description of discounts: by default is set by highest offer applicable‍

Reduce drop-off in the saved address page

• Experiment with banner text to push shoppers to the next page i.e. payments
• Play around with button text to reduce customer anxiety towards payment (e.g. using "Payment" as a term in this button might not be a good idea)
  ‍

Payments Page → Orders

Incentivize payment step

• Utilize payment offers: (You can utilize both manual and automatic payment offers to nudge customers at the last step) 
• Communicate the incentive clearly e.g. reinforcing the message using a Payment banner would go a long way

Build trust in payments

• Use banners to highlight payment and refund policy if that comes across as a gap through customer conversations
• In case the banner is being used for another purpose, you can use Trust Icons to communicate payment security and trust concerns
• Customize text in each of the payment tiles to communicate best to your users.
  

Increase payment success rate

• Check method wise success rates (you can look at this data on Shopflo as well as your payment gateway dashboard) - keep track of averages and benchmarks at your end to comment on changes
• Check which payment mode is performing badly. Accordingly, move that payment method tile to the bottom by reordering or change the underlying payment gateway for that method (integrating more than 1 PG is a great idea)

Control COD

• Depending on how important COD is for your business, play around with COD extra charges, prepaid offers, and placement of payment tiles to get the right mix of payment page conversion and prepaid share.

‍

‍