When a visitor clicks “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” on one of your product pages, you’d figure that they would complete their purchase and checkout. The shocking truth is that more than 6 out of 10 shoppers don’t complete their purchase. In this guide, we’ll be looking at the reasons why shoppers don’t complete the checkout process and the steps you can take to encourage more visitors to complete their purchase on your ecommerce site.

First, we’ll look at the cart, which operates a lot like a traditional shopping cart. A visitor places all the products they want in the cart until they decide they’ve shopped enough. Then, they proceed to confirm their order information and pay for the products in the cart.

In addition to being a virtual container that “holds” all the items before someone completes the checkout process, the cart is also a page on your site. When you click on “View items in my cart”, the page you are taken to is known as the cart page. There are also “mini-carts” which display the cart content without a visitor having to navigate to a separate page.

The cart’s most important role from the visitor's perspective is to allow for the continuous tracking of order cost and content. As the seller, your goal with the cart is two-fold. You want your customers to complete the checkout process and you want visitors to continue shopping and put even more products into their cart, thereby increasing the transaction value of each sale.

The next step after the cart is the checkout process. This is the process someone takes to order the items in their cart. Typically this includes entering billing, payment, and any shipping information. Depending on the nature of the product of service, there are a few cases where the customer places the order and payment or completion takes place later, but for most ecommerce sites, the checkout process is the last step.

The checkout process can take place on one or more pages as your customer enters the information necessary to process the order. Most ecommerce sites have two pages for the checkout process, one is for entering billing and payment information, and the other is for order confirmation. During the checkout process, additional options may be chosen, such as expedited shipping, or indicating that the purchase is a gift.

1.2. Building and maintaining trust

It’s essential to build and maintain trust in your cart and throughout the checkout process. This is one of the best ways to combat cart abandonment. A shopper who is unsure about your store is more likely to abandon the items in their cart.

The main components of trust building are providing clear information, recognizable payment methods, and product support. These should be in your focus when you work to improve your checkout process.

In addition to covering the basics, consider what graphics, emblems, warranties or guarantees can help. Using the standard images for credit cards helps establish credibility. Believe it or not, these simple graphics can go a long way to making your checkout process seem familiar and “safe” to your customers.

Another tip is to add a “trusted” or “secure” badge to your site from a third-party security firm that verifies your site. Verisign, Thawte, and Trust-e are well known providers, and people are used to seeing a logo of this type at checkout.

When you don’t have a third party to verify your security, you can use a lock graphic to show that your website is a secure connection.

For warranties and guarantees, look for badges that have the same number of days, ie – “30-day warranty”, to add to your site.

This example from the Jamaica Pro-Am International Golf Tournament shows how to effectively use credit card images and a “trusted” badge to keep customers moving through checkout. This is especially important for smaller ecommerce sites that may not be well-known brands.