More steps in Checkout, More chances to Bail

In recent studies of e-commerce web sites we found that purchase completion rates were highest when there were 4 steps or less in the checkout process. For those sites studied where the checkout process included 5 or more steps the purchase completion rates dropped. We have defined the checkout process as the step after a consumer selects ‘checkout’ within the shopping cart page to the step in which they receive their purchase confirmation. In the instance where the site had only 3 steps in the checkout process, purchase completion was 77%, the highest among the sites reviewed.

For the e-commerce site that had 5-6 steps in the checkout process, the purchase completion rate dropped to 49%. What does this mean? It’s logical to think that the more steps and pages visitors view in order to complete their purchase, the more opportunity they have to either be distracted from the task at hand or decide to bail altogether. Neither of these scenarios results in a desired ending. There are several things you can do that will help reduce the steps and distractions within a site’s checkout process. First, remove all unnecessary links and text that is unrelated to the checkout process. The focus of the process should be getting visitors through it without interruption. Second, when prompting visitors for their billing and shipping addresses, a checkbox option should be provided that will allow them to pre-populate one of the address fields if both addresses will be the same.

In addition, including the address and payment fields within the same step can help reduce the number of steps in the overall checkout process.