Ecommerce Software: Single Page Checkout

There are many benefits to having your checkout system being a single page, and without question one of the biggest benefits is that it will be easier to use. Having a difficult checkout process will certainly hurt your business. With the society we live in, we want things to be as easy as possible. We have check cards which almost everyone uses right now. When we go to large retail stores, we have people that place items in bags for us, multiple lines, it is quick and it is easy. The online ecommerce checkout system must be similar as well.

One of the biggest problems that you will face online when you do not have a single page checkout system is that you will quickly find that you are losing traffic. Regardless of how beautiful your pages are, I have never seen a page which did not lose some elements of traffic. This is referred to as a bounce rate. For example, if a page has a bounce rate of 0%, then means that 0% of the people who visit this page are leaving the website while on the page. 100% would mean that everyone who visits that page is leaving to go to another website when they go to it. Any page with a lot of traffic going to it will never have a 0% bounce rate. With a lengthy checkout process, you are losing more traffic with each page they have to go through to buy your product. On a single page checkout, you might have a 60% bounce rate, but on a multiple page checkout system, you may only get a fraction of the 60% who may have purchased your item.

There are a few reasons why this may happen. One of the biggest reasons is that people begin second guessing themselves about the purchase. Especially if it is an expensive item, people will contemplate whether they really need that item just before they put in their credit card. The lengthier the checkout process, the more time you give them to decide they no longer really need or want the product. The quicker you can get them interested and through the checkout, the more likely you will avoid this problem.

Another problem is that more and more people are using the internet to buy things. Many people may be buying from you who have never bought anything online before. This may be a strange thought to you, but particularly in ecommerce, this is always a good possibility. Since this is the case, they are used to having people help them during checkout processes. After a few pages of going through a checkout, they may quickly decide that they are not sure that they are doing things properly and just go elsewhere. Again, you are losing a valuable customer simply because your checkout process is too long and too difficult to complete.

Lastly, the vast majority of multiple page checkouts look very unprofessional in comparison to single page checkouts. Often times they are simply used because they came with some type of ecommerce software. You really do not need users to create accounts for any particular reason, or you may not need some information that is requested. Most people will quickly call you out on these types of things and may leave all together if they feel that they are being asked questions that do not need to be asked for their purchase. I would encourage you to get rid of parts of a checkout form that you know you will not need. Developers are capable of doing this very inexpensively so that you can be sure to get the most of those who are contemplating buying your products.