People leaving at the checkout page on my website

[drunkglitch]

Hi Ukbusiness forums,

I have a website ecommerce store and, when I check google analytics I can see that on most days I get around 700 Visitors to my website per day and around 10 people going to the checkout page, but only 3 of those 10 people actually finish with the checkout. Does you know reasons why this could be? Thanks for the help.

 

[UseYourWeb]

Can be a variety of things from their geographical location all the way through to display problems on tablets and mobile devices. You'd have to be more specific what is your site called?

 

[fisicx]

It could be a thousand different reasons. Do you require them to login/create and account? Do you add P&P at checkout? Are the forms overly complex? Do you take people off site?

I'd also be worried at less than 1% getting to checkout. It indicates your products aren't what people want or the site is so dire they aren't hanging around.

 

[Jasmine_analyst]

I agree with all above answers, there can be various reasons for people turning back at the check out page.
- there can be issue with your product reviews (may be, take a look around)
- your redirection to payment from the checkout may be a broken link or take the visitor somewhere else or may be taking too much time to load that is why people are turning back. Do the process yourself and tell your friends to test it. Moreover hire a adequate website tester to check the fault.
- Check your delivery prices too, may be you need to revise them
- Last but not the least, check the mobile experience of your website, because may be you are having most traffic from mobile and possible you are not having a mobile website or a responsive web design to cater the needs of mobile visitors.

Let me know if you need any further help... happy to help

I am an experienced Business Analyst in IT projects working with a Web Designing and Web Development firm.

 

[ecoleman]

- Adding VAT at the checkout but displaying prices ex VAT
- Adding expensive Shipping at the checkout
- Slow delivery times (no express options)
- Making a customer create an account
- Non secure checkout (you may have SSL, but is there something loading from non SSL which is causing a warning?)

Also as stated above. I'd be worried that less than 1% of your traffic is reaching the checkout in the first place.

Where are your 700 visitors coming from?

 

[alexdigital]

Have you been through your checkout yourself recently? Take time to do it and have a think about what could be putting people off..

• is there too many steps?
• Are the forms to long?
• Are you using a frustrating capture?
• Do you have a "nuke button" like "clear form"?
• Does the payment gateway work correctly?
• Is there a "coupon" box? - if so visitors may see it then head off to Google looking for one.

You could ask for some tests on your site from companies like "whatusersdo" to gain more insights into what people are thinking..

-Alex

 

[Chris Ashdown]

Most likely cause is Delivery charges not shown until the end,

 

[Ashanti Brazil]

This is a good point. However, its understandable to have the Delivery Charges calculated once the Delivery Address has been entered (particularly if you ship Worldwide).
I would suggest clearly stating the delivery zones and charges somewhere on the website BEFORE the customer gets to the Checkout, so they are not in for a surprise.

Most likely cause is Delivery charges not shown until the end,

 

[alexdigital]

Most likely cause is Delivery charges not shown until the end,

This is a great point. Make you delivery charges clear throughout the website, before the checkout. People hate surprises. If possible try and offer free delivery and hide the cost within the products..

 

[StartUpC]

Try to get feedback: family, friends, etc. Let them check the process to identify where your potential customers may leave the checkout process as they’re frustrated with a part of it. Sometimes the dirty details make big difference.
Real (even the unsatisfied) customers are unlikely to explain exactly what’s annoyed them unless they’re prompted to. Usually they give improper answers you can not really rely on. Anyhow you desperately need feedback...
Analyse the times: how long they stay at the last point before they exit? You might have a slight idea whether they identify something that expel them or "think over" and simply leave.

BTW many good points mentioned above - great ideas to consider

 

[serpyre]

Usually two factors - trust - when people are going to spend their money they need to trust you. The other is if your hosting architecture is flawed the checkout visitors see the flawed architecture - not the faster frontend pages. This puts them off as the checkout should be as fast as the front pages. The average conversion is 2.5%, the average cart abdonment rate is ~65% so you are actually on the ball there. You didn't mention your platform, makes a lot of difference.

 

[japancool]

Before you start rushing to make loads of changes, stop and take a deep breath.

All the suggestions in this thread are valid - it could be all of them, or it could be none of them. Without taking a detailed look at your site and what you sell, everything said here is a guess. You can't tell if any of them are the "most likely" causes without more information.

First question - are you selling what people want at the right price? How do you compare with your competitors? If you're more expensive than they are without adding any extra value, then that could be the issue right there.

What stage are they abandoning the cart at? If they're abandoning at the point where the delivery charges are added, that will give you a big clue right there that delivery charges could be the culprit. If they don't even get that far, then you might have other issues.

Split test. Don't go making twenty changes at once, because you'll never know which ones have had an effect, which ones haven't. Make one or two changes and see if that makes a difference.

You could also sign up to UKBF as a full member and get a site review.

 

[serpyre]

Actually look at ad remarketing, that should do the job. Effectively the abandonement rate is not the problem as it is the average, it is the number of visitors and the conversion rate but that is a separate set of dynamics.

 

[japancool]

Usually two factors - trust - when people are going to spend their money they need to trust you. The other is if your hosting architecture is flawed the checkout visitors see the flawed architecture - not the faster frontend pages. This puts them off as the checkout should be as fast as the front pages. The average conversion is 2.5%, the average cart abdonment rate is ~65% so you are actually on the ball there. You didn't mention your platform, makes a lot of difference.

If he's getting 3 sales out of 700 visitors, his conversion rate is 0.42%. He's way off the mark if the average conversion rate is 2.5%.

But we don't know if that is the average conversion rate for his market sector or not.

 

[wayzgoose]

I would be wary of an "average" conversion rate. Might mean some ecommerce products average .5% and others average 4.5% - or even less and more ! And then it depends what time of year it is, and what the weather's like etc. etc.

In fact thinking about it a bit more, average conversion rate is a load of twaddle! There are 100s of thousands of sites that anyone providing these imaginary figures has not got the slightest clue about and they have absolutely no way of knowing their figures, whether it be turnover, profit or conversion rate.

 

[serpyre]

The aggressive drinkers must be out this time of night. An average is an average, a benchmark to measure against, from there you adjust to your circumstances. As the OP never gave any details about their business, anything more than the average is complete conjecture, nothing more, nothing less. A benchmark is better than saying "we have no clue" which has the measuring capability of zip - unless you are trying to sell something - oh right, website builder - fair enough. Never thought of Forrester as imaginary - but SMEs never did understand how the corporates roll.

@japancool - we were talking about the cart abandonment rate, the 0.5% conversion is about standard for a small SME site with limited marketing but definitely below average, again without details of margins, platform, products, basically their complete business plan - it's back to the average again.

 

[japancool]

@japancool - we were talking about the cart abandonment rate, the 0.5% conversion is about standard for a small SME site with limited marketing but definitely below average, again without details of margins, platform, products, basically their complete business plan - it's back to the average again.

Sorry, it's standard or below average, which one?

Where are you getting your figures from?

Given that we have absolutely no idea about what his business is, as you say, don't you think it's better to get some details before quoting a figure that may or may not have any relevance? He might be doing really well in comparison to his peers, for all we know.

 

[serpyre]

Forrester and some enterprise consultants who are architects for companies like Samsonite & Renault - we would say no-one really important, but, well. A startup will get around 0.5%, the average is 2.5%, from there it is depends on the 10s of factors that affect their business. It is the stake in the ground to measure against, nothing more, nothing less. The relevance isn't our problem or yours, it is theirs, very much doubt they will give their complete business plan publicly - but you never know - so they need to figure out whether theirs should be above average, below average or equals average - but at least now they know what the average is.

Always love the - where did you get your figures from (people can't be bothered to use Google) - or no point in measuring as we don't know (usually trying to sell something) - but the original question was cart abandonment - and theirs matches the standard which allows them to concentrate on the real problem - their conversion rate (assuming they do not have fat tail business conditions). Then suggested re-marketing which is designed to fix this - oh right, it closes the topic and then no possibility to sell them services, fair enough, our mistake.

 

[wayzgoose]

Yep, like I said, a load of twaddle.

 

[japancool]

Forrester and some enterprise consultants who are architects for companies like Samsonite & Renault - we would say no-one really important, but, well. A startup will get around 0.5%, the average is 2.5%, from there it is depends on the 10s of factors that affect their business. It is the stake in the ground to measure against, nothing more, nothing less. The relevance isn't our problem or yours, it is theirs, very much doubt they will give their complete business plan publicly - but you never know - so they need to figure out whether theirs should be above average, below average or equals average - but at least now they know what the average is.

Exactly - but that average is, presumably, over the entire e-commerce sector as a whole. You don't know what they're selling, who they're selling to, whether they're B2C, B2B etc. etc. Your "average" figure could be way, way out. Of course no one is expecting them to reveal their entire business plan but you don't need all of that information to narrow it down to a much more useful metric.

Always love the - where did you get your figures from (people can't be bothered to use Google)

Why? What's wrong with asking you to substantiate a claim you've made?

- or no point in measuring as we don't know (usually trying to sell something) - but the original question was cart abandonment - and theirs matches the standard which allows them to concentrate on the real problem - their conversion rate (assuming they do not have fat tail business conditions). Then suggested re-marketing which is designed to fix this - oh right, it closes the topic and then no possibility to sell them services, fair enough, our mistake.

I have nothing to sell them, but thanks for the consideration.

 

[fisicx]

The average conversion is 2.5%, the average cart abdonment rate is ~65% so you are actually on the ball there.

the 0.5% conversion is about standard for a small SME site.

As Eric Idle once said: 'He's making it up as he goes along'.
Both your figures are meaningless. Just like saying 50% of the people on the UK are blow average intelligence.

 

[ecoleman]

You can't worry yourself about overall average conversions.
You need to know the average in your market. However 0.5% seems extremely low IMO.

If I converted 2.5% I'be be out of business a long time ago.

I would also be concerned if my cart abandonment was anywhere near 65%.

Saying this, we don't have enough information to make assumptions. We don't know at what stage the OP is loosing customers.
If delivery charges are not displayed anywhere on the site, then customers may be adding items to the cart simply to calculate a delivery charge.

 

[antropy]

Do you use a one-page-checkout?

 

[japancool]

It could also be that those 700 visitors are poor quality, people who aren't actually interested in what he's selling in the first place. Maybe it's all from Indian SEO experts, or people looking for Youtube videos of drunk loaders instead of whatever he's selling.

Without considerably more information, there's no way to give a useful answer. It's a bit like saying "My car doesn't go, what's wrong with it?".

 

[serpyre]

We would say, but you do realise that enterprise companies have 5-10x more efficient processes than SMEs, but it would make sense that is not understood. As an SME if you take a benchmark of an enterprise company (they release that type of information) you are by most definitions going to come very short. So take Net-A-Porter, 5% conversion rate with £500/order average, now take an SME fashion site, they'll get 0.5-1% and £50-100 average sale. It's not rocket science - you just have to not be lazy and do a little research - the only reason to get angry about it is if the sites your're hosting are way under the average. There will always be exceptions of smes in highly targeted niche environments coming above 2.5% - but you would need a corporate conversion rate of 12.5% to 25% - not many of those around. So for the majority (not the exceptions) - the benchmark is the target - just unfortunate most will not see it.

Took the very timely amount of 30s to come across this, one of many.
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/chart/average-website-conversion-rates-industry#

By the way, Google quote 2-3% as well, perhaps you need to take the argument up with them directly.

 

[serpyre]

@fisicx - looks like you spend a lot of time here - this should be interesting. You are obviously completely unaware that 50% of all online revenue is made by the top 5% of companies. You fail to understand one very simple fact, there is a concentration at the top, the average is not dispersed evenly - it always makes us smile when people ignore information from Google, Forrester, enterprise companies presuming that they know best yet the enterprise companies are multiple factors more efficient with scale of economy. Just like everything in life, just because you don't understand it doesn't mean it doesn't exist, that's purely lack of experience. But we don't like the SME approach of 1:1 revenue to effort - there are much better things to do in life.

 

[japancool]

We would say, but you do realise that enterprise companies have 5-10x more efficient processes than SMEs, but it would make sense that is not understood.

That being entirely the point. The OP is presumably not an enterprise company so the corporate conversion rate is totally irrelevant to him. Are you going to tell the corner shop to carry out the same practices as Asda? Of course not.

So what if 50% of all online revenue is made by the top 5% of companies? How is that relevant in any way, shape or form to the OP? What you appear to be unable to grasp is how to offer the relevant advice for the OP's circumstances. You've suggested remarketing before you've even got a clear understanding of what the problem is. You've got a cheek calling everyone else lazy when you can't even be bothered to do that. I can see why you have so much time to post on an internet forum.

 

[serpyre]

You do really need to start digesting information, an SME will have a 5-10x hinderance over the enterprise company, so if they find the largest competitor then the conversion rates (which is the original question) are publicly available, they can reduce it accordingly and have their own benchmark to work from - simple.

Actually we have so much time because we're waiting for the consultants to finish building the fraud mitigation solution for a 180+ country store with 100s thousands products - it auto loads from the suppliers so have spare time. The wonders of solutions derived from large enterprise business processes that reduce workload by 10x. If you don't have high grade fraud mitigation those international sales will take you out.

Anyway, so instead of spending 3-6mths a/b testing, adjusting their site, and seo - it was suggested that ad-remarketing which directly targets conversions will give an answer in 2-3wks (10:1 again - funny that). We thought that these were business forums to provide solutions not service provider forums, obviously our mistake.

 

[beasty]

This thread should be lets get into an argument and try and win it regardless of how it helps the OP.

 

[ecoleman]

Actually we have so much time because we're waiting for the consultants to finish building the fraud mitigation solution for a 180+ country store with 100s thousands products - it auto loads from the suppliers so have spare time. The wonders of solutions derived from large enterprise business processes that reduce workload by 10x. If you don't have high grade fraud mitigation those international sales will take you out.

Who cares. How does that help the OP?
Anyway, I think you are getting ahead of yourself a bit here because if you bothered to read the opening post conversion rate was never questioned at all.

The OP clearly has customers getting to the cart/checkout and then bailing. Clearly he needs to find out why. At the moment everybody is simply speculating and making suggestions.

 

[serpyre]

@japancool asked, we answered, normally that is the polite thing to do but perhaps manners are no longer used. As we said, they can take the 3-6mth approach and find out why or the 2-3wk approach and just try to fix it, that's up to them to decide which is more suitable. Again, we thought these were business forums for solutions to problems, clearly our mistake.

Definition: The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action. The archetypical example of conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who buy something on the site.

 

[ecoleman]

Definition: The conversion rate is the percentage of users who take a desired action. The archetypical example of conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who buy something on the site.

I think we've all got that

 

[BrightIdeas]

To benchmark or compare any company that actually posts on here to a brand icon like Net-a-Porter... hahahahaha.

OP, with regards to getting some feedback about your checkout process, I have found Feedback Army really useful before for basic usability testing.

 

[fisicx]

You are obviously completely unaware that 50% of all online revenue is made by the top 5% of companies.

And how does this help the OP?

All you keep doing is posting lots of stats and marketing guff. It matters not one jot what happens elsewhere, the OP needs help with their site. Telling them 0.5% conversions is the norm for an SME (apart from being 100% wrong) is of no value unless you post some tips to help improve that percentage.

 

[serpyre]

Well considering the platform we use was designed by SAP architects and modeled on Net-A-Porter & Asos and downscaled to Magento, it comes from pretty good authority - you just refactor downwards by 5-10x for SMEs - but who cares right. So they can use surveys, a/b testing, seo changes over a 3-6mth period with a variable degree of success or implement ad remarketing with a 50-80% chance of success over a 2-3wk period - as it was designed specifically to decrease cart abandonment rates - now they have a choice.

As least we now know why we have so much more time available than anyone here.

 

[fisicx]

^^And that right there is why your posts don't help.

 

[ecoleman]

Well considering the platform we use was designed by SAP architects and modeled on Net-A-Porter & Asos and downscaled to Magento, it comes from pretty good authority - you just refactor downwards by 5-10x for SMEs - but who cares right. So they can use surveys, a/b testing, seo changes over a 3-6mth period with a variable degree of success or implement ad remarketing with a 50-80% chance of success over a 2-3wk period - as it was designed specifically to decrease cart abandonment rates - now they have a choice.

As least we now know why we have so much more time available than anyone here.

YAWN!

 

[UseYourWeb]

lol your all wrong
its 15% of the overall value MINUS the end result of sales is proportionately variable to the lower end numbers, you see, helping is like my middle name
Interesting enough, the op who posted this hasn't been back, no doubt down to advice similar to mine
I've called Jeremy Kyle and he's interested in the business angle.
coming soon to ITV ...

 

[14Steve14]

Can some please delete all the irrelevant posts that are of no help to the OP please and get this back on track. It could have been a good helpful post to many people, but it has turned into an argument as many posts on here do.

 

[yottacom]

Returning on the original topic:

• The first task should be to analyze while only a tiny percentage of the visitors become clients. It could be that they are just browsing and looking for cheaper alternatives. It could be that they are just looking for "non transactional answers" for example they are looking for support on a specific product because they have bought it in a shop or on amazon.
• The second task should be to analyze the checkout process. there are some tools that allows to record the user sessions for example:

http://www.ghostrec.com/ (100 free sessions each month)
http://www.inspectlet.com/ (100 free sessions, but only 4 free each day)