A lot of research and testing goes into optimizing a checkout page, and perfecting the cashier is no different. If you succeed, it means more conversions and happier customers!

Let’s break down the four critical things that have been found to make a cashier effective: simplicity, color, process, and design.

1. Simplicity

Too much clutter and customers will bounce, it’s as easy as that. A majority of consumers have abandoned their carts just because the checkout was too complicated.

Luckily, checkout page optimization can increase conversion rates by 35%. One part of improving the checkout experience is by making everything simple and straightforward, pleasing to the consumer’s eye and catering to their goals.

Single Page vs Multiple Page

Single page checkouts have all elements necessary to the checkout process on one page and uses AJAX web development techniques that result in dynamic functionalities and content.

Multiple page checkouts have a page for each step, typically generated by triggering JavaScript code. Unlike single page checkouts, these multiple pages will require page reloads.

An abundance of research has shown that single page designs are significantly better in terms of user experience. They’re faster and easier for customers and tend to have higher conversion rates.

So why and when do e-commerce and finance companies use multi-page checkouts instead? Well, one advantage they have is that they allow for more accessible analytics. For example, you gain insights into the sales funnel, such as when a customer abandons a sale.

In addition, in some industries, a slower checkout process may actually be more appealing to its customers. If you’re selling a product or service that is relatively expensive and doesn’t work as well with impulse buying, a multi-page checkout process might be better.

2. Color

Color psychology is real! Forbes explored how you should select colors for features on your site. Something as small as selecting the best color for your checkout buttons can influence customers to buy from you.

Here are some of the basic colors that invoke emotions in consumers:

Red – A red checkout button conveys a sense of urgency and can make consumers feel hungry. Companies like Target, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Applebees, and Pizzahut all freely use red in their branding.

Yellow – Yellow is bright and eye-catching, but not as pressing as red. It offers a sense of warmth and cheerfulness and is excellent in making customers feel calmer. For example, Amazon uses yellow bars to indicate what’s really important: Proceeding to Checkout.

Green – Green for greenlit, green for go, green for health! Many companies use green to convey acceptance, helpfulness, and environmentalism.

These are just a few examples of color psychology. As you dig further into what colors your checkout page should have, you might need to do more research, A/B testing, and also consider the rest of your site design and branding features. You might want the color of your checkout page(s) to complement or contrast your other color schemes.

3. Process

The critical elements of your checkout page all need to be there. You need space for your customers to enter payment details, billing details, shipping details if you sell a product that needs to be delivered… And of course, the button to confirm the order.

A streamlined process that doesn’t take away from the checkout design can help you minimize shopping cart abandonment. In addition, here are some things that should not be on your checkout:

• Forced registration – Customers hate being told they have to do something before buying. Forced account creation hinders checkout.
• Outbound links – Get ready to say goodbye to your customers if you include links to somewhere else on the checkout page. Customers who click away have a lower chance of returning to finish the purchase.
• Performance issues – If your page crashes, provides error codes left and right, or doesn’t load correctly due to poor site speed optimization, you’ve got a problem. Customers will trust you less.
• Unexpected costs – Surprising customers with unexpected costs at the time of purchase can shock customers out of paying. Provide adequate info upfront of the total cost, including potential shipping fees and taxes.

Apart from the negatives you should avoid, there is also plenty you can do to improve the experience for your consumers. For example, showing what’s in their cart already, offering guest checkout options, using a progress indicator… The possibilities are endless, and the way you set it all up can give your checkout experience a unique flair.

4. Design

It’s common for companies to be stumped when it comes to design. There’s just so much to consider when you need to implement all the cashier best practices in one.

Depending on your checkout page optimization strategy, this might be where you put into play the design concepts of simplicity, color psychology, customer conveniences, and more.

On top of all that, you probably don’t want your page to look like a bland, cookie-cutter checkout page. You want to be able to get the themes you want and be able to customize it as you desire.

Praxis Tech offers an all encompassing, payment orchestration solution. All of that research you’ve just read, we’ve done. And more. We offer tools and services to make payment optimization easy!

We provide an expert design team to optimize your cashier experience from top to bottom. You’ll get a fast, secure, developer-friendly way to accept payments anywhere, from any device. With just a few lines of code, you can create a secure, mobile optimized checkout in minutes.

For customized mobile checkouts, our product comes with a suite of tools to fine-tune the experience while having an in-house design team to make your cashier as native as possible to your site. Everything is hosted on your site, so you benefit from on-page analytics to start A/B testing and find the best payment flows.

Get in contact today to book a demo and see how Praxis can Power Your Payments.