3 Little-Known Holiday Payment Hacks for Mobile eCommerce
Costly Mistakes & Recent Findings
Counted among our 5 Most Costly eCommerce Mistakes of 2017, payment method optimization is a must. Over the past year, we’ve seen a big push towards Apple Pay, PayPal Express, and even Venmo becoming “must-have” holiday payment methods for online stores. The reason? Customers that can click-and-go are more likely to convert.
With this in mind, we recommend reviewing what ways your site can keep gift-giving second-guessing to a minimum. In our mobile conversion optimization report, we found a few simple tweaks to reduce checkout abandonment and increase the likelihood of customers converting. If you don’t have time to review the full report, here’s our 3-minute breakdown as our gift to you.
Holiday Payment Hack #1. Zip-Code-First
On almost every site, the checkout form is the same, always starting with the customer’s first name. Sure, the name, phone, and email address areas might auto-fill based on browser settings, but location information isn’t always part of the one-click equation. Working with one of our clients, we found that a simple re-stacking of the typical model can cause checkout disruption to the tune of a 4.6% conversion rate lift (across all devices). Placing the zip-code first triggers browsers to auto-populate the country, city, and state data, making your checkout faster. In our report, we found that this simple change can yield conversion increases of 1.48% for desktop, 8.14% for smartphones, and a whopping 18% increase for tablets. Put this on your holiday upgrade wish list.
#2. The Card-Detecting Checkout
As the second test in our study, Redstage’s developers created a credit card checkout form that automatically detects the type of card entered based on the first 4 card numbers. I know, I know, you have that already, but what you don’t have is a checkout form that uses this data to automatically adjust your checkout form into the layout of the customer’s credit card. Different cards have their numbers, expiration, and even security codes in different areas, making the typical credit card form a little lacking in the CX department. Imagine a new customer with their card in one hand and their phone or tablet in the other. Now imagine them fumbling as they try to figure out how to enter their info… don’t let this be an opportunity for them to abandon the sale. Our smart bit of code automatically matches the form to the card in-hand, making it easier to fill out. Remember, the less friction, the better.
It might seem like a negligible CX change at first, but for phones and tablets, this smart checkout option drove a 3.7% and 6.1% conversion rate lift, respectively. The test didn’t add so much for traditional online checkout, only increasing desktop conversions by 0.4%… but every little bit counts right? How much extra joy would these numbers add to your holiday return?
#3. The Big One: PayPal-First
For the third and final portion of this 3-step study, Redstage analyzed what happens when we place a “PayPal Express Checkout” button above the traditional “proceed to checkout” button on the product page… The results were astounding. This change led to a 10.3% decrease in checkout abandonment across devices. That’s right. Simply putting the PayPal checkout option first on the page led to a 8.7% decrease in abandons on desktop, 11.2% less abandonment on smartphones, and shockingly, a 30.7% decrease in abandonment on tablets.
Final Thoughts
With so many payment options out there, it’s easy for the simplest conversion enhancements to go overlooked. Remember, it’s not just how customers can pay, it’s “how quickly” customers can pay. Want to get these holiday payment upgrades and more for free? Join round 2 of our conversion study now! Sign up here to see if you qualify for this round, and don’t forget to subscribe to receive the results of our next conversion report 2 weeks before anyone else!
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