Smoothen registration and checkout flow for a flawless shopping mobile app experience

Many young and ambitious online commerce businesses have similar goals of making signup smooth to get as many registered users as possible. 

When you are at the early stages of making your own app without coding, you might need to have an extended user base. It helps you generate meaningful analytics, promote the app, and receive feedback from them. 

A rule of thumb says that user registration should not take long. The best way is to integrate social media networks for a quick sign up.

Implementing Facebook and Google registration helps to increase the number of potential users for your e-commerce products. However, the question is: when should we prompt users to sign up?

Soft spots in e-commerce apps

The e-commerce market seems to be growing rapidly and intensively. It has been forecasted that the total value of global e-commerce retail sales will reach around $3.5 trillion by the end of 2019. If this trend persists, about 95 percent of all purchases are expected to be made via e-commerce by 2040.

Existing e-commerce businesses are still facing issues that lead to a bad shopping experience. For example, a poor registration UX and checkout may result in a high cart abandonment rate. 

These issues, however, can be solved by a slightly improved registration and checkout design. It might give you around a 60 percent higher conversion rate. 

In today’s post, we will guide you on how you can optimize your checkout experience and win customers. 

Do not imitate the giants! Use guest checkout

Most popular e-commerce services allow users to explore the app anonymously. For example, Amazon, Asos, 6 pm, Etsy, and iHerb. These brands let users do endless window shopping but also prompt visitors to sign up once they put something in the cart. 

This seems like a good UX pattern to follow at first glance. But these e-commerce giants’ tactics won’t always work for startups. It is because, first, they do not always adapt to their users’ needs. Second, they know people tend to be conservative when a new UX feature comes up.

That’s where guest checkout comes into play. It lets new users freely navigate an app and make a purchase without forcing them to register or log in.

Let’s briefly discuss the pros and cons of using guest checkout in your e-commerce app:

Guest checkout Pros 

Advantages from the customer’s perspective:

- Guest checkout saves time. About 34 percent of purchases get abandoned because of a mandatory sign-up prompt.

- You will not receive annoying advertising emails after making a purchase/s.

- If you are fearful about mobile apps collecting your personal data, then guest checkout is the perfect solution. 

Advantages from the retailer’s perspective:

- Implementing guest checkout can reduce the cart abandonment rate by 34 percent.

- The lower the communication cost, the more users will complete their purchases.

- Guest checkout encourages users to return and register later on because of their first positive experience. 

- You can collect your customers’ emails for your mobile app marketing.

Guest checkout Cons 

Disadvantages from the customer’s perspective:

- Even with the guest checkout, you need to enter your shipping address and credit card info. Don’t worry. It won’t be saved for next time.

- You will not get a personalized product feed. That means you cannot discover new products. 

Disadvantages from the retailer’s perspective:

- Users are less likely to leave product reviews.

- It is challenging to receive product feedback from guest users.

- Guest checkout averts you from tracking audience analytics. Because analytics can be beneficial for product development and improvements.

If you want to create a happy shopping experience for users with a classic registration and checkout process in your mobile app, we have a couple of ideas for how to make checkout flow as painless as possible. 

Re-define your checkout forms 

1. Minimize the number of fill-in fields  

Offer a standard checkout process that comprises a lesser number of fill-in fields. For example:

- contact and delivery information

- credit card information (or pay with Google, Paytm, PayPal account)

2. Pre-fill fields 

Using GPS location, you can let users define their current position, which can be useful when entering shipping and billing addresses. 

3. Make input field labels visible

Always display your checkout form’s input fields. Because, once you have filled out all the fields, it will be easy to scan them to ensure everything is correct.

4. Send error alerts that help users solve issues

When the error window pops up after completing a dozen forms, it causes a feeling of frustration among users. Here, you need to alert them in the best possible ways. For example:

- Try to prevent the error from occurring.

- If it has happened, tell the user about it at once. Do not wait until all the fields are completed.

- Make the alert clearly visible.

- You need to be direct. Tell your users what happened and give a clue about how to solve the problem. For example: ‘This email address has already been taken. Please choose another one.’

5. Offer a simple option like ‘billing address is the same as the shipping address’ 

It saves most users a lot of time and helps to avoid confusion. 

The following points relate directly to mobile e-commerce app checkout:

6. Show the right keyboard

Show letters for text fields and digits for numeric fields. It might seem obvious enough, but this rule is often neglected. 

7. Make sure your CTAs are always visible 

Make your call-to-action buttons (CTAs) always visible. You must draft the copy on your buttons in a more declarative way. This keeps users more informed about what they are going to do. 

Deliver a smooth and secure payment experience 

1. Enable a variety of payment options 

Online shoppers expect a certain level of flexibility in how they pay for their purchased products. Therefore, it is important to let them choose their preferred payment options. 

As a rule of thumb, many e-commerce apps are equipped with significant payment gateways such as Stripe and more. Such payment gateways allow you to securely accept credit card payments without dealing with customers’ sensitive data. 

Using third-party services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay for checkout helps you get more payment options as well as increase your sales. Customers use the majority of these services because they feel more secure using them rather than giving their credit card number to an unknown app. 

2. Use security badges 

The lack of trust is one of the top reasons for checkout abandonment. That’s why it is crucial to address security concerns. You need to state that paying with your app is safe when users proceed from their cart to the checkout. 

By adding security badges and icons, you can make your payment page look secure. This will help users perceive that the checkout page is secure. It also makes them feel comfortable when they are sharing financial details.

Serve custom sign-ups gently

When users get started with the app, gently suggest to them that they can register with you to move forward. Offer them an opportunity to decide whether they want to become a member of your shopping app or remain anonymous. You can even tell them how signing up can make their lives easier down the road. 

It is important to show all the perks of becoming a registered user of your app. Point out your main features of the app that lead them to sign up. 

Note that your app content plays a key role in convincing new users to join your app. 

Provide social registration for creating accounts 

Allow your customers to register with your Shopify e-commerce app via a social media account. It is quick and does not require customers to create a new username and password. 

Using the infrastructure of established social networks like Facebook, Google, or Twitter, you can have an increased level of security when it comes to dealing with users’ personal information.

When it comes to standard registration via email, you can ask a user for their full name, date of birth, gender, and a password to speed up the process. Other information can easily be requested later.

Wrapping up

From simplifying forms to offering more convenient payment tools, to refining the microcopy, these little improvements help you create a brilliant checkout experience and delivering real value to your users.

Allow your customers to choose products and pay for their orders before asking them to create an account. Make them know that registration is the last step of the process. That way, if you give them the freedom to discover your app and your products, customers are less likely to abandon their shopping carts. It will be the first move towards better app usability. Hence, it helps you make healthy and loyal relationships with your customers.

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Created on Apr 14th 2020 05:52. Viewed 436 times.

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