By Ben Wheeler, Head of Enterprise Sales, MIRACL – the login you love
When TikTok comedian Adrian Bliss posted a sketch about a bunch of items abandoned in the online shopping cart, he hit a nerve: over two million viewers liked the video, and many commented that their shopping cart looked exactly like that.
Poignantly, Bliss’ video was an ad encouraging reluctant buyers to complete their purchase. There’s a reason ecommerce retailers are spending money on comedians like Bliss: cart and checkout abandonment is a constant issue in ecommerce. In 2021, goods worth an estimated $4trn were abandoned, but $260bn are recoverable. Whilst trying to reduce cart and checkout abandonment, you might have overlooked one of the most vital metrics. Here, we’ll look at how you can improve your ecommerce checkout experience, prompting your customers to close the deal.
How can you improve the ecommerce customer experience?
predict that by 2040 nearly 95% of purchases will be ecommerce purchases. Already, online shopping accounts for a big chunk of the overall retail industry. The online customer experience is very different from that of the brick-and-mortar one. Here, you can’t entice shoppers with sounds and smells. You also have to guide them more than you would in a store: where are the offers, and which buttons do they need to click when? Your customer journey should be a smooth path, not a jungle full of unexpected twists. A well-designed website could be the first step to ensuring people stay long enough to make a purchase. Most ecommerce retailers also know most consumers shop on their mobile devices, so they ensure their website is formatted effectively. And the end of the customer journey awaits the grand finale: the checkout.
What is the best practice for login and registration on ecommerce websites?
User flow is crucial when it comes to your customer checkout. Usually, a checkout follows a simple pattern:
- The customers are browsing your products
- They add the ones they want to their cart
- Login information
- Billing info
- Choice of shipment (free, special delivery)
- Order preview
- Payment
- Order confirmation via email
At any time during this process, your customers might decide to leave rather than complete the purchase. Sometimes, that might be due to factors outside of your control. Often, you can improve the checkout experience and increase sales as a result, measuring the checkout conversion and cart abandonment rates to get there.
What is the reason for cart abandonment and checkout abandonment?
Long, complex checkout process
An overcomplicated payment process tends to slow users down and makes them lose their attention at the very moment they are signalling their desire to buy. According to a recent study by IMRG, the worst-performing retailers had an ecommerce checkout process up to three pages long.
If you’re only selling online products, ask yourself if you really need the address field. Some companies like Dribble have done that and only require an email address and payment details.
Security seems inadequate
That is a genuine concern: 47% of Americans have been victims to credit card fraud in the past five years. Consumers expect a safe shopping experience. At the same time, they also want a fast one.
Speed and performance
40% of consumers will wait no more than three seconds before abandoning a site. Thus, in ecommerce, it might be your goal to have a website that loads in two seconds. That can be a problem if you want or need to add additional security layers such as Multi-Factor-Authentication (MFA). Ideally, you might want both: A seamless, safe shopping experience that takes seconds.
The missing metric that makes all the difference
A typical website has a login success rate of 60-85%, depending on the industry. Every percent added here means an increase in sales and profit, so you could revamp your checkout experience if your login success rate is too low. 17% of shoppers who abandoned their cart said security concerns were the reason. Yet this metric seems like the primary school friend at the wedding that no one has ever met.
Your login process could be getting in the way of sales, but most ecommerce companies are not tracking it. Our survey results show that people are abandoning their carts because of the inability to log in or have to create an account. These shoppers are unlikely to ever return as they found purchasing from you too complicated.
Start measuring your login success rate
Ecommerce is data-driven, so know your baseline. Then, compare that to industry standards by using our calculator on the homepage. Our average login success rate is 98.96%, and our best is 99.996%. That means only two people needed to reset their pin in 50,407 authentications.
You have more options than guest check out
Many ecommerce businesses offer a guest checkout to avoid friction in the checkout process. Although that can make it easier for shoppers to buy, it has many disadvantages for the business:
- You can’t request reviews after the purchase
- Difficulty reviewing, modifying, or tracking orders
- No option to easily reorder products
- It’s difficult for customer service to assist shoppers with their orders
- You can’t link a customer’s order history
- It’s time for a login experience that benefits shoppers and ecommerce alike.
Simplify account setup and reap the rewards
By simplifying the account setup or login experience, your login success rate will likely improve, and you can usher people quickly to their basket, ready to close the deal. You might wish to consider fast login options that are hack-repellent (including common ones like phishing and man-in-the-middle), so you’re protecting your company and your users.
How A/B testing your login can help you
If you’re not sure how much of a difference a faster, easier login will make to your checkout conversion rate, why not test it?
You might start with the different user flows you’re currently testing. How do people go through your funnel? Where would you ideally like them to go? How can you simplify that account set? You could also test a complete conversion. By focussing on the process that has the higher abandonment rate, you might see the difference for yourself.
Does better security mean longer checkout? How do I increase checkout conversion?
During the 2021 holiday season, monthly bot attacks on retail websites rose by 13%. One-third of all login attempts turned into account takeovers.
The average data breach cost in the UK has grown to nearly £2.7 million, so skipping over this part of the login process isn’t an option. But here’s the problem: when shopping, we don’t want to spend time going through long-winded authorisation systems. Methods like MFA, where customers have to add an additional step to their password login, are often much safer but a hassle for consumers. They remind shoppers of everything that can go wrong, potentially adding friction to the buying experience. Even more, they can slow down the checkout process, increasing the risk of cart abandonment.
Simplifying this part of the customer journey can benefit your business enormously. Often, the faster and safer their login experience is, the easier it will be for them to complete a purchase – and to return for more.
Curious to A/B test your login? Why not get in touch for a pilot at [email protected] or visit miracl.com.
MIRACL takes the most frustrating part of every user experience – the multi-step, multi-factor authentication process – and replace it with a single PIN code (or biometric) that takes less than two seconds. It’s totally compliant, highly secure, and a quick way for companies to decrease churn, win lost revenue, and dramatically improve user experience. We call it single-step MFA, and it’s as easy to set up as it is to use. MIRACL is also inclusive – it can be used by everyone from six years old to 100+, so you can use it for every target audience and quicken your conversion rate throughout.
Published 06/10/2022
