If you run an eCommerce business and have been struggling for quite a long time with your shopping cart’s high abandonment rate, this blog post can help.
This article will evaluate the pros and cons of your eCommerce website’s multiple-step and single-page checkout systems. This information can not only help you with your eCommerce website, but you can also follow these tips for your eCommerce mobile app.
Although this must be decided before proceeding with the eCommerce web design work, you must not restrict yourself from switching to the appropriate checkout pattern that you think will work for you.
If you are unsure which checkout pattern (single page or multiple steps) will be best for your eCommerce website, you can always run A/B split testing.
Single Page Checkout
Pros
a) Speed—When your eCommerce website has a single-page checkout system, your users are not required to wait for page refreshes between each step, which helps your customers fill out a single-page form much more quickly and conveniently.
b) Visible Progress – Internet users have become impatient and expect every process to be short and instant. A single-page checkout always shows the users the progress of the form, which adds a little psychological boost and encourages them to finish it.
c) Navigation – The good thing about a single-page checkout is that there are no navigational elements. All the fields are on the same page, so there’s no need to return to the browser. In a multi-page checkout, this might cause problems, especially if customers return to their original page and find that they have to re-enter data.
Cons
a) Layout – The only drawback with a single-page checkout system is that when you are required to collect a large piece of information from your customers (depending upon your business), you will be required to show all the fields together on a single page which looks messy and turn your customers off.
Recommended post: 7 Checklists for your eCommerce website to get more conversions
Multi-Page Checkout
Pros
a) Capture Partial Information – By splitting up your checkout into multiple pages, even if your customers abandon the checkout at a later stage, you can still capture their basic details like name, email, and phone number (if you ask them about these details in the first step only).
Now, you can use this email to send them reminders about incomplete orders, which will help you bridge the gap between prosperous and abandoned orders.
b) Analytics—Since we split the checkout system into multiple steps or pages, we can use Google Analytics to track the user’s behavior on each page/step.
For example, suppose you observe that most users abandon the checkout form at the third step (which could be billing details or shipping information). In that case, you will at least know the problematic area and be able to take corrective measures to fix it.
c) Layout – No matter how much information you intend to collect from your customers on your eCommerce website, your checkout page always looks clean and clutter-free because you have already split the whole form into multiple steps. So, the layout of your checkout page looks good.
Cons
a) Length—Since the multiple-step checkout page may look lengthy, it may discourage your customers who don’t have time to fill all the fields and patiently wait for each step to refresh. Generally, when impatient users see multiple checkout forms, they get disheartened and decide to quit the website and drop the idea of buying the products.
Recommended post: 10 Usability Tips For eCommerce Web Designers To Enhance Online Shop