5 Annoying Friction Points At Checkout

Ready for some Spring cleaning? Spend some time this month and actually buy wine from your website from beginning to end. You may just find some room for improvement.

Conversion rates don’t lie. Getting potential customers to your site takes a great deal of effort. If they leave without purchasing, it could be because they are bumping against an annoying friction point. Customers have become increasingly savvy and have little patience for awkward ecommerce sites. The best way to improve conversion rates is to identify and eliminate major friction points during the checkout process.

For someone looking to buy wine on your site, keep in mind that these are the 5 most annoying friction points:

1. Not mobile friendly

Mobile is not second class. Over 25% of your website visitors are coming to your site with their mobile device. Don’t make them suffer with pinch and zoom and tiny products. Give them a great experience with all of the information!

2. Birth date validation to enter site

This is a major friction point before consumers even browse your site. Website bounce rates are 20% higher when you add an age gate. Think of your user’s experience and reduce clicks when you can. If you must use an age gate, instead of a birth date selection (which adds at least 4 clicks), try a one-click button that confirms that the consumer is over the legal age. Monitor your bounce rate on Google Analytics and adjust accordingly.

3. Forcing people to create an account

Another password? Your customer hasn’t tasted your wine yet, so how can you ask them to commit? Instead of forcing account creation, focus on moving new customers up the permission ladder to repeat customer to club member. Develop a relationship with your first time buyers. Set up personalised action emails with a specific call to action. First time buyers have a high email open rate of 60%, so it’s a great way to connect. Personalised, effective, awesome.

4. Hidden shipping costs 

Customers want to know what their purchase will cost before they head to the checkout. How many times have you abandoned a cart once you realised that shipping costs to your address were too high? Wouldn’t you have rather known the cost up-front? Hiding the costs just results in delayed cart abandonment.  Allow customers to select their state and see the shipping cost, or better yet, include shipping costs right on your wine page. Shipping discounts outperform product discounts in A/B testing, even when product discounts are a better deal.

5. Too many form fields

Don’t force customers to give you every detail. Focus on what information you need from them in order to complete the sale and make those fields required. Then you can look at the details that would be nice to have. Request information wisely, because long forms are daunting for a potential customer. Form fatigue occurs when billing and shipping forms display side by side. Two forms? Ugh. You should display the billing form and default to the same address for shipping. If the user chooses a different ship-to address, then display the shipping form at that time. By reducing clutter upfront, you’re able to effectively guide the user through the mundane task of filling out forms and you can successfully complete the sale.

Have I missed anything? Let me know what frustrates you the most while buying wine online in the comments below.