Research has shown that no less than 66% of all e-shoppers have at some point left an online shopping cart before completing their purchase due to insufficient shipping options.
In fact, close to 80% of all shoppers will abandon their cart before proceeding to payment, translating to lost revenue for e-commerce business owners. It's not just important to attract visitors to your website - converting visitors to customers is fundamental, and you can do that by ensuring that your checkout process is as simple, flexible and hassle-free for your customers as possible.
Here are some tips from us on how you can increase your conversion rate and make your checkout page more attractive to your customers through Sendcloud.
Offer multiple delivery options
In today's busy working world, a large percentage of people are not available during standard business hours to receive a package at home, and they certainly don't want to have to deal with collecting parcels from neighbours or trying to locate it after work at a service location that they did not originally choose. The ideal customer journey for an e-commerce customer is to have a parcel delivered to them on time, directly to their chosen delivery location, at a time of their choosing.
It's therefore so important that you can attract your customers to push the "proceed to payment" button during the checkout phase by offering them a range of delivery options that they can select from based on their individual time preferences and service level expectation.
When you integrate your online store and ship through Sendcloud, you have a range of carriers to select from that offer in a plethora of delivery options. We make it very easy for you to choose which shipping methods you want to offer, in addition to providing you with clear pricing information, so that you can determine the price you want to charge your customers for different types of delivery.
For example, why not offer your customers some of the options below with any of the most popular carriers with which we have partnered:
- Home delivery
- Delivery to a local service point
- Shipping to parcel machines (Belgium)
- Same-day delivery (the Netherlands)
- Express delivery
- Saturday delivery
- Evening delivery
- Time-nominated delivery
- Time sensitive international delivery
There's a fine line between offering too many shipping options and making the choice too complicated for your customers, and offering too little and running the risk that they exit the checkout process based on not having a convenient delivery option.
You can use the examples above to determine which options would most benefit your customer base, and offer them at your checkout through your Sendcloud integration.
Integrate service points
Having the option to ship to a service point is quickly becoming one of the most popular delivery methods chosen at checkout. Not only is it more convenient for a lot of customers, but it's often a very affordable shipping solution. When you enable service point delivery for your integration in Sendcloud, you can seamlessly integrate all the available pick-up points of all your enabled carriers in the checkout of your webshop.
Here you can find an overview of the current shop systems which support our service point picker, and find articles for your specific integrations to show you how to enable it in Sendcloud.
When a customer selects "Deliver to service point" at the checkout page, they will be directed to the map above where they can choose their preferred service point location where they can pick up their parcel. If you have enabled track & trace notifications, they will receive an email when their parcel is ready for collection.
The service point picker will suggest the closest point to the customer's postcode which they entered as their delivery address during checkout, but they can navigate the map and select a different location if preferred.
Offer affordable delivery options
Of 1,800 customers surveyed on the reasons why they abandoned their cart during the checkout process, 60% cited the reason "Shipping costs too high". When a customer pays for shipping, they are not just paying for the physical delivery of the parcel through the network of the selected carrier, but also for any potential handling and packaging costs incurred during the preparation of that order.
With that in mind, you don't want to price customers out of purchasing from you by overcharging them for shipping costs. Use our price calculator to determine what your actual shipping costs are, and don't forget to factor in your additional packaging and handling costs when making a decision about what price to charge.
Consider offering free shipping above a certain price point - this encourages customers to increase their order volume, meaning more revenue, and also makes them more likely to complete the checkout process because they aren't met with a heavy shipment fee.
You can also offer customers vouchers and free-shipping coupons after their order is complete and even after delivery via track & trace emails and your customisable track & trace page. As you know, the customer journey doesn't just end at delivery. Not only do our track & trace emails provide your customers with the kind of useful updates about their delivery status that they want to know, but they provide you with an opportunity to encourage return visits to your webshop via promotional banners, your Instagram feed and clever branding.
However you decide to incorporate the tips in this article into your checkout process, you can always contact us for additional help selecting your shipping methods or integrating flexible delivery options. Just make a support ticket from your Sendcloud account to contact us.
Happy shipping with Sendcloud!
Title image courtesy of jannoon028
*Source: https://baymard.com/checkout-usability
Image courtesy of freepik