Driving Results with Innovation & Creativity

When customers are reining in spending, businesses need innovation and creativity to maintain engagement. One place businesses can start is at the checkout experience. Based on more than 88,000 hours of user experience research, researchers at the Baymard Institute discovered that the global average cart abandonment rate is 69.8%, but all is not lost: A better checkout design can help ecommerce sites gain as much as 35% in conversion rate.

In 2022, the Baymard Institute, an independent web research institute with a focus on ecommerce usability and optimization, conducted a new eCommerce research report highlights user-experience optimisations, commissioned by Amazon Pay. Download the report here or keep reading for more research findings. 

Start with simple changes

A large proportion of users type out their full name in the “First Name” field. Reduce friction and user frustration, especially on mobile, by using a single “Full Name” field.

During Baymard Institute’s checkout test studies, users generally thought of their name as a single entity: 42% of test subjects typed their full name in the “First name” field at least once. Only when they noticed the “Middle” or “Last” name fields did they go back to correct the error, adding needless friction.

A relatively minor interruption on desktop can become a more trying ordeal on mobile. Users may have to re-enter the field, delete the text, and copy/paste or retype into the correct field.

The solution is straightforward: implement a single “Full Name” field. Titles, suffixes, and similar additions, make forms appear more complex and add significant friction, as users must assess each optional element’s relevance.

Don’t make users go backward

Editing data at the review step can create friction, particularly when users are sent backward in the checkout flow. Those sent back must figure out where they’ve been sent, find the relevant field, edit the information, and get back to the review step.  It’s inefficient and has the potential to introduce errors.

The solution: keep users on the review page to complete their edits through in-line editing or a page overlay. With in-line editing, you can provide either prefilled form fields or turn static information into a prefilled form after clicking “Edit”. Page overlays are ideal for semantic groups of information that either consist of multiple form fields or that can impact other order details.

Create a great guest experience

Even though users may abandon a checkout because the site wanted them to create an account, optional account creation is appreciated by many users. Provide the option to those who want it without disrupting those who don’t.

Any additional options in the guest checkout flow tend to hurt UX performance. Even optional fields can distract some users from placing their orders.

Saving the option to create an account until after checkout is a better-performing strategy because it keeps users focused on completing checkout, it typically just requires creating a password, and the confirmation step has more room to sell users on the benefits of an account.

Remember to inform guest users at the beginning of the checkout process that they can create an account at confirmation step.

Download the complete Baymard Institute report for all their latest checkout optimisation tips for ecommerce. 

Innovation and creativity in action – leading to huge optimisation gains

With Amazon Pay, you can help reduce cart abandonment by making it easier for hundreds of millions of Amazon customers to check in and out on your site using the information already stored in their accounts — including both their shipping addresses and payment details.

London-based Elvie provides an innovative slate of breastfeeding essentials include the popular, portable, and undetectable Elvie breast pump series, as well as other life-changing health and wellness tools. 

With the help of Amazon’s brand recognition and Amazon Pay’s fast and easy checkout, Elvie was able to reach more parents and make it easier to shop their trailblazing products.

“We were seeing a high drop-off prior to implementing Amazon Pay. Consumers expect vendors to offer quick ways to check out, and Amazon was the perfect partner for us to do it with,” said Lucia Cisneros, Senior Digital Marketing & D2C Manager. “We saw a 40% increase in conversion compared to our regular checkout.”

Learn more and get started today.