Recent data indicates that global cart abandonment rates hover around 70%, signaling a need for businesses to figure out how to improve their checkout experiences—an important final step of the online shopping process.

Checkout optimization includes adapting to consumer behavior shifts, and recognizing and reducing friction in transactions. A holistic approach, rooted in data and customer feedback, can create an optimized checkout that not only boosts conversions but also fosters trust and loyalty among shoppers.

What’s in this article?

• What is checkout optimization?
  
• Why checkout optimization matters for businesses
  
• Checkout optimization tips
  
• How Stripe can help
  

What is checkout optimization?

Checkout optimization is a systematic process of refining the online checkout experience to reduce friction, minimize cart abandonment, and increase conversion rates. It involves improving various elements of the checkout process to make sure shoppers are able to complete their transactions easily and efficiently.

Why checkout optimization matters for businesses

Checkout optimization is an important part of running a successful business, since the checkout experience impacts multiple aspects of business operations.

• It directly affects conversion rates
  The checkout process is the final step leading to a confirmed sale. The smoother and simpler this process is, the more likely a potential buyer will convert into a paying customer. When customers encounter challenges or unexpected complexities, they often opt out, abandoning their intended purchases.

• Cart abandonment is costly
  Attracting potential new customers to your sales channels often involves significant spend on marketing and advertising. When a potential customer decides to abandon their cart, it doesn’t just mean a lost sale. It signifies a wasted effort in bringing that customer to the website in the first place, representing both lost revenue and an inefficient return on investment.

• Customer loyalty is at stake
  A straightforward, hassle-free checkout experience can encourage repeat business by establishing trust and a long-term relationship between the customer and the business. However, the opposite is also true. A single negative experience, especially during checkout, can drive potential loyal customers toward competitors.

• It shapes perceptions
  While customer perception of a brand is affected by multiple facets of their online shopping journey, from product selection to customer service, the checkout process has a significant impact. An easy transaction process can reinforce the perception of professionalism and reliability, while a complicated process can tarnish the image of even the most reputable brand.

• Feedback loop for improvements
  Monitoring and analyzing customer checkout behavior can generate useful insights. By understanding customer preferences and pain points, businesses can continuously refine their strategies—guiding decisions related to payment methods, user interface refinements, and even product offerings.

When done well, checkout optimization can improve a business’s overall conversion and reputation, but a subpar checkout experience can undermine other efforts to acquire and convert customers.

Checkout optimization tips

Businesses must prioritize and invest in refining their checkout systems. Let’s take a closer look at how to effectively build high-converting checkout pages:

• Reduce the number of steps
  Each step in the checkout process represents a potential drop-off point. While some steps might seem important for data collection or upselling, they can deter purchases. The key is to strike a balance. Reducing steps can mean merging similar stages, asking only key questions, or employing a one-click checkout process. By keeping the process short, the likelihood of cart abandonment will diminish and conversion rates will typically improve. Over-complicating the checkout process can lead to fatigue, confusion, or reconsideration—all of which are detrimental to sales.

• Offer a guest checkout option
  While customer account creation can facilitate loyalty program membership or easier returns, mandating it at checkout can reduce conversion. By offering a guest checkout option, businesses can support those wanting a quick purchase without commitment. Businesses can instead offer account creation post-purchase, once the primary conversion is secured.

• Provide transparent pricing
  Studies have shown that trust is an important factor in sales. Hidden fees—whether they’re for shipping, taxes, or service charges—can erode that trust. By offering a transparent, detailed breakdown of all costs early in the checkout, businesses convey honesty. This approach reduces the risk of cart abandonment at the final payment stage.

• Include multiple payment options
  Payment preferences can vary based on region, age, or personal choice. By providing multiple options, businesses accommodate a wider range of customers. And certain payment options now offer installment payments without interest, which can be a deciding factor for customers making more significant purchases. Offering a diverse range of trusted payment methods means removing another potential barrier to purchase.

• Optimize for mobile
  Many customers opt to conduct transactions online using their mobile devices. Designing a checkout process for mobile means more than just fitting it to a smaller screen. It requires rethinking the design and functionality, in addition to ensuring that buttons are easily clickable, forms are navigable, and load times are short. A poor mobile checkout experience can not only deter a sale, but it may also discourage a customer from returning.

• Incorporate progress indicators
  Cognitive science suggests that people like to complete tasks. Progress indicators take advantage of this by visually representing the start, middle, and end of the checkout journey. By visually guiding shoppers through the stages, businesses can reduce feelings of uncertainty and promote task completion—encouraging shoppers to make a purchase.

• Implement clear calls to action
  Clear, concise calls to action (CTAs) guide customers intuitively through the checkout process. Strong, compelling language paired with intuitive design ensures customers understand their next steps, preventing them from getting lost or frustrated during checkout.

• Ensure easy error handling
  When mistakes occur, how they’re handled can impact conversion. If a customer encounters an error during checkout, it’s important to guide them toward a resolution without making them feel at fault. This involves highlighting the error and offering clear instructions for correction, without requiring them to restart the checkout process.

• Insert trust signals
  Customers have increasing concern about data breaches and cyber threats. Implementing trust signals—through badges, testimonials, or clear links to privacy policies—assures customers that their data and financial information will be handled with care. Establishing this trust will help convince customers to provide sensitive personal information.

• Offer save-for-later options
  Many customers spend time considering purchases before committing. By allowing them to save their cart or wish list items, businesses cater to this shopping habit by enabling customers to return later and complete their purchase.

• Reassure about privacy
  Data privacy is top of mind for many customers today. Provide clear, transparent messaging about how user data is used and stored. This isn’t just about compliance with laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), but about building a relationship of trust with customers.

• Avoid mandatory upsells
  Upselling can be a powerful tool when used judiciously. However, forced upsells—especially when they interfere with the primary purchase—can frustrate customers. Offering optional, relevant upsells is a more balanced approach, showcasing additional value without obstructing the main purchase pathway.

• Optimize page load times
  Customers often have limited patience when shopping online. Page-load delays can result in a significant percentage of potential customers giving up on the purchase. It’s also important to reduce load times, since fast load times indicate a well-structured website and often lead to better search engine rankings.

Businesses should cultivate a strategic and empathetic approach to checkout optimization. While the details of checkout optimization may vary for each business, every business must look at the checkout experience from the customer perspective, understand any existing pain points, and continually refine the process.

Learn more about how Stripe can help businesses build and maintain a strong checkout experience.

How Stripe can help

Stripe Checkout and Link contain features that can increase checkout conversion rates. Their design principles prioritize ease of use for customers, while maintaining high security standards. By integrating these services into their online platforms, businesses can offer their customers a quicker and more secure payment process, which is known to improve checkout conversion rates. Here’s a quick look at how these solutions work:

Stripe Checkout

Stripe Checkout focuses on ease of integration and is highly adaptable. This pre-built payment interface is PCI compliant, meaning it adheres to stringent security standards for card payments. It auto-adjusts its layout depending on whether the user is accessing it via mobile or desktop, which helps reduce cart abandonment rates.

Link

By using cookies and secure tokenization methods, Link remembers customer payment details in a convenient, secure way. When Link recognizes a returning customer, it autofills their stored information, reducing the number of steps to complete a purchase. This design feature is particularly effective for improving checkout conversion rates while maintaining the strictest compliance with PCI regulations.

Payment Links

Stripe Payment Links generates shareable payment URLs that offer an option to sell online without a website—no code required. Businesses can create a payment page with just a few clicks and deliver the link via multiple channels—including SMS, email, and QR codes—reducing friction for customers who might not want to pay via a business website or app.

This functionality of a faster checkout experience means that any stored information for repeat customers can be applied when they click the payment link, similar to the Stripe Checkout experience. In technical terms, Stripe uses the same secure tokenization and cookies as it does in Link to offer this feature, directly increasing conversion rates by making the payment process faster and easier.

Interoperability and security

Both Stripe Checkout and Link work seamlessly with other Stripe services, including Stripe’s fraud prevention suite and analytics tools. They also provide APIs for easy integration with third-party services, allowing businesses to collect data and implement additional functionalities according to their specific requirements.

Security is a key element in both services. Stripe uses machine learning algorithms for fraud detection, and both Stripe Checkout and Link offer end-to-end encryption. This ensures that customer data is protected at every step of the transaction, from initiation to completion.

Learn more about checkout page optimization using Stripe’s checkout pages.