Customer psychology of ecommerce checkout

What do customers want in their ecommerce shopping experience?
What do they think while deciding to purchase product from any ecommerce store?
What do they expect to get from retailers when opt for check-out process?
What drives them to buy particular products from your site or how social media helps to create impact on purchases?

All these questions exhibits the mindset of the customers while online shopping. Lets us see some of the factors that can help us to understand customer psychology while shopping online.

Site Loading speed

First and foremost thing customer should look for is the site speed. They should be able to open the site within a few seconds, as if it takes more time customer will definitely stop waiting and move onto another site. 57% of the people don’t wish to continue surfing the site if it takes more time to load and 80% of the customers would never return again.

Ecommerce Website Design

92.6% of people state that ecommerce website design is most essential part for influencing a purchase decision. Product view within 90 seconds can lead to initial decision of whether to purchase item or not? Initial judgment is mostly on the basis of overall design and feel of the site. Images and icons should be accurate and should offer multiple products images as well. Avoid poor navigation options and make use of the right mad pleasant colours. You can take help of a good ecommerce website design company for better results.

Product Video and Images

Multiple product images and different viewing angles of product leads to 58% more sales.

25% of people return ordered products, the reason being that they did not receive exactly what they ordered or viewed on site. So, it is important to have accurate product images which are high resolution and have a different viewing angles.The display of the products to be delivered to customer as they shouldn’t feel misguided and misled by showing and providing differing products.

A Product video description always helps to aid the purchase decision for the buyer. 31% of the people are likely to buy the product after watching its product video. This shows that audience is more confident about buying the product after watching the video.

Lets see review surveys of 2012 that show what percentage of audience were influenced by watching videos:

57% are likely to buy products after watching the video and are more likely to return.
52% people stay at the site longer if companies provide product videos on their site.
44% of the people purchase more products that allows them to learn about products from the given product videos.

Take help of any good ecommerce development company to make great product videos that can sell more.

Product Review

Reviews are testaments written by the people who have used the products and are sharing their experience.

85% of the people read the review online before purchasing products.
Out of this 79% believe the reviews and take decision on that basis.
67% of the people read at least 6 to 7 reviews which they think are enough to make them purchase decisions.

Usage of checkout Statistics

67% of the customers leave the checkout process on the site for some or the other reasons. An Online poll conducted among 1200 ecommerce users to find out the reasons for it. And here are the conclusive statistics:

44% of people (the maximum percentage), stop or avoid checkout process thinking of hidden charges the site claim to be paid by customers at the checkout.
29% do not proceed due to registration process before buying the item and
24% of the sites requires account registration compulsory.
10% of users leave on the half way of the checkout due to lengthy process.
11% of customers face the issue when they see unclear delivery details
8% discontinue due to unavailability of the phone number
and the rest 1% is due to some or the other reason which isn’t specific.

So, why to have lengthy checkout process?

5.08 steps is the average length of checkout process among top 100 Ecommerce websites. Ecommerce websites shouldn’t have more than 5 steps for checkout process. 50% of the ecommerce website will ask for the same information twice. There can be better options, instead of minimizing steps we can even keep a guest checkout option which was developed in 2011.

Tips to attract customers for checkout process

Use clear call action buttons i.e the next, proceed, back or any continue button. It should be clear and highlighted on your ecommerce store.
Show checkout process bar so that customer comes to know how many steps are they away from completion.
Keep the checkout design simple and concise so that the customer isn’t distracted.
Allow a back button in checkout process as any time the customer feels to discontinue the process he or she can do that.

Abandon of cart

Men often abandon the cart more between age 25-44 when it comes to drop the purchase.
42% of the customers avoid cart when they don’t get enough information from the customers reviews.
42% are those who don’t use cart as are looking for better prices and
16% are those who just wish to see the products and have no intention of purchasing it.

81% of the retailers assume that newsletter is a must functionality on their site.
While 40% of the customers don’t wish to receive a newsletter so they hate signing up for an account.

Coupons and Deals

More than half of the US adult internet users possess a digital coupon through offline or online sales. Coupons can increase customer satisfaction and cause up to 4% rise in sales. Discounts work the same way, as 57% of the users buy the items due to discount. The percentage of adult internet users was 48% in 2012 and 52% in 2013. Adults using digital coupon was 55% in 2014 and by the time in 2015 it became 57.5%

Shipping

59% of the users avoid shipping cost while purchasing any products on an ecommerce store. 44% avoid purchase because, shipping cost is high. 53% of customers mentioned that if shipping cost is reasonable they are willing to buy from online retailers. While 24% people feel that delivery on same day is important and 76% believe that it doesn’t matter if it’s not delivered immediately on the same day itself.

Payment and Security

More than 80% people feel secure about online transactions after seeing trustworthy card logos on the ecommerce store. 40% of people go for online transactions knowing that there are more than one payment methods available on the store. 59% neglect payment if the payment method is not in place. There are few payment gateways available like paypal, epay, Authorise.net etc. Among all these methods, 60% of web transactions are done by PayPal which ranks at the top payment methods. It should be your primary aim to provide best facilities and sustainable value to customers as that will ultimately leads to a long term relationship and great sales. Most of the ecommerce softwares such as BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, OpenCart has an ability to manage these features.