For those of you who didn’t know, “The West Wing” is one of my favorite shows ever. I have watched every episode multiple times and can recite entire sections of dialogue. So as I was reading an article recently, a scene from an episode popped into my head.
Why that scene popped into my head is because I was reading an article on consumers’ experiences engaging with online checkouts for different retailers. Making it as easy and frictionless as possible for consumers to check out plays a huge role in getting consumers to make purchases. Checkout processes that are long or cumbersome get abandoned and we’ve all see what those sites look like.
This means that any improvement — getting rid of any piece of kelp that is stuck to your checkout — is hugely important in improving your conversion rates. Have you gone through your portal and tried to make a payment? How easy or difficult is it?
- At CostCo for example, the company rolled out new technology that cut down the time it takes for their homepage to load on a mobile device to two seconds, from eight. That was very important to the company because 60% of its eCommerce business is done when consumers are on their phones.
- Sonos tested its portal and went away from a single-page checkout to a three-step design, which made it 4% easier for consumer to navigate. Only 40% of users who were putting something in their cart were actually checking out, so the company knew that if it could improve that rate even a little bit, it would have a huge net impact.
Maybe you don’t think many people are coming to your portal and opt not to make a payment because the process is not easy enough. There is one way to find out. If you don’t know how many people are logging into your portal and then not making a payment, that is a data point you need to know. Because if you can get just a few more of them every month to make a payment instead of abandoning their visit, think of how much more you will collect. Every knot of boat speed makes a difference.
