UX Guide
11 UX tips for the perfect checkout flow
Boost your checkout process into a guaranteed conversion with our 11 best tips
What's the secret to a successful eCommerce business? Marketing extraordinaire? Sales strategies that ignite genuine fireworks? Or the quality of your checkout? That's our expertise at Loqate.
We help you to create an outstanding and memorable user experience (UX) during the checkout process - the driving force for sustainable trust and long-term loyalty from your customers. An optimised user experience in the checkout process boosts your shopping cart value and conversion rate, as well as the repeat purchase rate and customer loyalty, while minimising cart abandonment and eliminating return costs.
Find out how to turn your checkout into a conversion booster with just a few easy-to-implement steps.
1
If the shoe fits: Put yourself in your customers' shoes
A thorough customer analysis is one driver to help achieve strong sales figures. Do you understand your customers' buying motives, needs and challenges? If so, you will be able to create a checkout experience that eliminates doubts and skyrockets conversions.
Use these tools to anticipate your customers' every wish:
Feedback forms
Integrate a feedback form on your checkout page, perhaps in form of a pop-up window on your thank you page or send an email after the transaction has been completed. With a post-purchase survey, you show your customers that you value their feedback. As a retailer, you benefit from valuable information about your customers (and their preferences) - and establish the basis for more rewarding buying experiences.
More personal attention thanks to focus groups
Take advantage of market research and use focus groups - small groups with representatives of your target audience - to find out what really moves your customers and prospects, what their challenges and expectations are. This will give you first-hand feedback from your actual users and potential customers.
Social listening
Tune in and listen up: Social media listening allows you to track and analyse what is being communicated about your company or your industry through social channels. Use your own channels to get in touch with customers and collect real-time feedback. This allows you to track frequently discussed topics and recognise the top customer needs – in real time.
2
Simplify the payment process
Convenience, simplicity and clarity are current buzzwords related to the online checkout process. Why? Because every retailer wants happy, content customers with zero shopping basket cancellations and as many purchases as possible.
Short steps, short journey
A step-by-step payment process with a progress indicator makes navigation easier, requires less scrolling on the mobile device, conveys a sense of progress and thus ensures transparency.
Type-Ahead - a must have
Use a single-line type-ahead search to help customers find their addresses in a few keystrokes and get accurate results even if information is missing or misspelled.
Bye bye to unneccessary contact form fields
Keep your form fields as short and minimal as possible - especially when it comes to entering the address (which is often the most time-consuming step!). The quicker your customers get to the "Order now" button, the more likely they are to complete the purchase.
3
Be our guest - the guest checkout
Be our guest: with this feature, even reluctant shoppers become convinced buyers. Being forced to register before making a purchase is the second most common reason for cancelling a purchase. According to a Statista survey (2022), around 62% of respondents say they prefer to pay as a guest when making their first purchase online with a retailer.
Reduce the password chaos
Users also often forget their account details. In that case, it is easier to complete the checkout as a guest than to recover the password. So don't pressure your customers to log in, even if the guest user has an account.
Determined customers
When the payment process for a guest is buried behind account registration, customers have to go through a lengthy (and often tedious) process. The better solution: let them decide for themselves. Offer a guest purchase option (for both first-time and existing customers) to minimise friction and cart abandonment.
Switch from guest user to account
After checkout, offer your customers the option to log in or register to link their purchase to an account. For instance, this can be done via email. Our tip: Combine the registration with attractive incentives to double the motivation.
4
Building an international loyalty program
Your customers' focus is always on the current form field. Clear, immediate validation is therefore essential to avoid confusion caused by invisible error messages and subsequent delivery problems.
Real-time verification of phone numbers & emails
Displaying input errors too early (before the user has completed the input) or too late (after completion) can confuse users. Real-time validation allows for timely feedback. Validate mobile and landline numbers quickly and directly during onboarding and use a phone number validation API to allow users to check the validity of phone numbers for any country in the world. The same applies to email validation: check and validate email addresses in real time directly upon entry or as batch verification. This ensures that the recipient mailbox exists and that emails can be received.
Inline validation with confirmation
Validation often focuses on errors and negative feedback. Use a checkmark next to valid information to convey a positive feeling of progress.
Unambiguous language
Error messages and notes need to be clear. Instead of just describing what went wrong, guide the user through the next steps to correct errors directly.
6
Location, location, location
Many users are reluctant to share their location (often for good reason), but using a quality location data solution tool can be a huge benefit to both you and your customers.
Honesty goes a long way
When you ask your clients for their location details, explain the reason instead of just displaying a confirmation window. By communicating the added value to the user, you nurture important trust.
Customised payment processes – wherever you are
Cater to customers all over the world by customising your shop and the payment process to the respective region. If you support multiple currencies for prices, shipping and payment, you create the basis for more sales and fewer abandoned purchases.
Personalised, flexible service
Offer your customers the option of revealing their current location to provide them with personalised products and services, accurate shipping costs, local stock levels, personal pick-up and other service enhancements. These little upgrades foster trust and exclusivity.
5
Do it better than others
Take a close look at what the competition is doing and do it better. In our experience, thoroughness, attention to detail, and accuracy are the keys to a decisive competitive advantage.
Globally without borders
Some companies offer real-time address validation that automatically suggests addresses in multiple countries - but often with limited international coverage. When making your choice, look for global coverage with complete location records for every country and territory, including hard-to-reach markets and ensure international growth.
Passionate about location data
Choose a provider that combines multiple data sources for each country and territory into a single best possible data set – and benefit from the most accurate data. Many providers' data is not as complete and does not always include apartment-level data, for example – which is vital to ensure a seamless deliver process in many countries and territories.
Minimise false positives
False positives occur when an address is entered incorrectly but the error is not identified. Many providers rely on their mapping platforms and suggest invalid, non-standardised or incomplete addresses. Instead, focus on data curation methods that create a single optimal address data set by comparing data from multiple sources.
7
A different kind of payment - alternative payment methods
The future of digital payments is promising: alternative payment methods, such as express checkouts and digital wallets, are here to stay. A study shows that there will be more than 5.2 billion digital wallet users worldwide by 2026 - this corresponds to growth of over 53% (with 3.4 billion users in 2022)
Digital wallets and data quality
When data from digital wallets enters your backend platform, it often loses the correct format, leading to confusion and inaccuracies. Decipher these formats and ensure that each address is standardised and correct. In short: check, standardise and enrich missing data.
Check details
Check the format of credit card numbers at the point of entry, ask your users to enter the details in the order they are displayed on the credit card and use auto-formatting for numbers and dates to speed up input and recognise errors more quickly.
Multiple payment providers
External payment options such as PayPal or Apple Pay make the payment process faster and more familiar for your users. However, remember that too many payment options can be confusing for users (and their needs). Balance is key.
9
Trust is everything
Building trust is hard, losing it is easy. Throughout the buying process, from browsing to payment to customer service, use trust signals that your users recognise, e.g. from accredited bodies.
Rely on proof: Legitimacy & competence
Many websites and apps neglect meaningful security indicators in the payment process. However, SSL certificates and validation by third parties are convincing security features. Seals of approval are an important tool for promoting trust in the checkout. The advantage: you benefit from up to 33% fewer abandoned purchases.
Transparency as a key priority
Due to the large number of fake online reviews, customers tend to be sceptical of websites whose reviews appear to be pure hymns of praise. The following applies: publish your reviews, be honest and authentic and respond fairly and transparently to critical feedback. Plus: Don't just communicate shipping costs at the end in the order overview, but directly when selecting the shipping method to show transparency.
Exceptional support
Help and support after the purchase strengthen your customers' trust in your business. Clearly identifiable links to customer service, help centres, returns and terms and conditions in easy-to-understand language promise your customers exceptional service even after their purchase.
8
Everything (un)clear? Instant verification upon submission
Verify, verify, verify: Resolve address errors by verifying manual address submissions at the point of entry, re-verify entered addresses after processing or automatically validate completed addresses.
Address input as the biggest source of errors
A small number of customers choose to enter addresses manually, which can lead to a large number of address errors. You can easily prevent these by verifying manual addresses as soon as they are entered.
Wrong processing of addresses
Customers sometimes overwrite a verified address with details that they believe to be correct - another unnecessary source of error. You should therefore re-verify addresses that have been entered manually.
Automatic addresses for payment providers
Providers such as Apple Pay enter the customer's address in the payment process based on the information they have saved. This reduces the effort, but often leads to incorrectly formatted and outdated information. You should also verify automatically entered addresses.
10
Cross-channel shopping
The immediacy of the online world combined with the personal touch of a brick & mortar shop or the convenience of a packing station - that's what is fuelling today's shopping enthusiasts' desire to buy.
Locker Data
Create your customers' shopping experience as simple and effortless as possible: thanks to correct, well-maintained and formatted data in your online process, they can have their orders delivered quickly and smoothly to the nearest locker. You save costs: because every returned parcel that could not be delivered incurs average costs of 19.51 euros. So: rely on address validation for locker - for an unrivalled online checkout experience - convenient, seamless and simple.
Store Finder
Multi-channel shopping is the hot topic for many customers. They want a close connection between online shopping and in-person shopping. "Order online, pick up in store" is particularly appealing to British and Spanish shoppers in Europe (49% & 42%), but less so for German (26%), French (36%) and Italian (32%) shoppers (ECDB, 2024). The integration of a store finder on your website is therefore a simple, essential step on the way to a "phygital shopping experience". Customers feel more confident in their purchase decision when they know that there is a shop available to help and assist them with their order.
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Upgrade your checkout with Loqate
Reach every customer, everywhere, thanks to the most accurate premises-level location data and solutions - with just one platform.
Today, Loqate provides over 20,000 customers worldwide with over 3 billion validated addresses per month: the trend is rising. How do we achieve this? Quite simply, we set new standards by combining the richest, globally curated data with the most sophisticated parsing and matching technology in the world. The result: verified address data - standardised, enriched and structured in the most accurate local format.
We offer location data for 249 countries and territories in 6,500 languages - and are continuously investing in new regions. Our goal: to guarantee the most accurate data worldwide for our customers.
We curate the world's most comprehensive and accurate location-level address data by combining multiple data sources into a clear and reliable single view of a location.
Our global address validation tool offers cloud-native, low-code, platform-independent and always scalable options that are suitable for both smaller and larger implementations.
Ready to take your UX to the next level?
Get a free consultation with one of our data experts now.
