In a digitalised age where eCommerce brands are growing at a stellar rate, it’s become vital to optimise all aspects of an online business strategy, especially the checkout process. Payment page optimisation is paramount to the success of digital businesses, as they can directly impact sales volumes and conversions.
In fact, research by Statista uncovered that, as of 2024, seven in ten digital shopping carts are abandoned before a transaction is finalised. Further to this, a 2024 study by Baymard Institute found that eCommerce businesses can improve their conversion rates by 35.26% through a better checkout design. To this effect, merchants can alleviate many common payments pain points by improving their checkout page, reducing the chance of cart abandonment.
In this article, we offer actionable tips to help improve your checkout page and increase your chances of converting website visits into sales.
1. Improve your payment page design
Nailing the layout of your payment page can benefit your conversions and brand loyalty more than you think. Simple language, straightforward instructions and clear labels can be instrumental in offering a more seamless payment experience. Even more so, your checkout should be stripped off unnecessary elements for customers to easily navigate.
Below we outline some of the leading strategies you should keep in mind when managing the design of your payment page.
Keep your checkout on brand
Having a recognisable experience that aligns with the overall feel and touch of your eCommerce store can leave your prospects and customers feeling they’re in safe hands.
To sustain your branding at checkout, you might want to prioritise the following:
Logo – Your business logo is your brand identifier, so ensure it’s visible at checkout
Fonts – If your brand has a distinctive font style, use it for the checkout page and across all other landing pages of your website
Colours and branding – Using a consistent set of colours and branding throughout your eCommerce store can create a sense of familiarity that can help maintain a good user experience and build brand trust
How can emerchantpay help?
emerchantpay’s Web Payment Form Designer can help you easily create a bespoke branded checkout page. It includes a suite of features like adding brand colours, logos and fonts, among other things, to ensure styling consistency across your website.
Minimise distractions by reducing footers and headers
All your visitors should be looking at on your payment page is how to finalise the payment simply and conveniently. One way to achieve this is by removing or reducing the size of the navigation header and footer menus to limit distractions, thereby increasing the chance of conversions and minimising the risk of cart abandonments.
Make your checkout mobile-friendly
According to a Statista report, digital/mobile wallet payments as a share of eCommerce transactions volume worldwide is projected to hit 61% by 2027. In other words, more than half of consumers’ transactions will be completed on a mobile device. This suggests that your checkout process should be optimised for mobile devices if you are to seize the opportunity to capture that spend.
Businesses can do this by:
- Minifying code to deliver fast loading speeds
- Having prominent tap-friendly checkout buttons above the fold, either at the top of the page or as a floating button, such as ‘Add to cart’ and ‘Checkout’
- Allowing information to autofill via a plugin (e.g. Google’s Place Autocomplete) or tokenisation (more to come on this)
- Running a responsive layout that adjusts the dimensions of the page contents for different screen sizes
Another way to influence conversions is by visibly showing all items being purchased throughout the checkout process. This helps put the shopper’s mind at ease and reinforces their intent to follow through with a payment.
2. Reduce the length of the checkout form
Having too many boxes to check and options to fill, including required fields, can be time-consuming, slow, and possibly dampen the joy of making a purchase. Research from Baymard Institute indicates that almost 22% of US consumers abandoned their online purchase during checkout because the process was too long or complicated in 2024. By lessening the number of required fields, customers can complete the payment form in an easier and faster manner. Let’s take a look at some different ways to optimise this.
Reduce the number of fields
Recent research shows that most sites only need eight form fields for an optimal checkout flow, as of 2024. A higher number of fields has been shown to increase a user’s perceived and actual checkout complexity, leading to cart abandonments. When it comes to card transactions, businesses can simplify their fields to:
- Cardholder's full name
- Billing address
- Credit card information (e.g. card number, expiration date and CVV/CVC)
In addition, as explored above, users are likely to bounce off when they think the process to reach the checkout is too long. Adding completion markers or a visual progress bar to sections to showcase how many steps remain until the payment completion can help benefit conversions.
Merchants can also adopt a one-page checkout approach, which allows customers to submit payment information and complete their purchase all in a single window. Multipage checkouts add more steps, which may result in customers becoming impatient or rethinking their purchase. By implementing a one-page checkout, shoppers can complete a purchase quickly and efficiently, increasing the likelihood of them following through with a payment.
3. Accept your customers’ payment methods of choice
Offering an array of different ways for customers to pay for their purchase can be favourable for a merchant’s sales and profitability. These may range from traditional means of payments, such as credit and debit cards, to local or global payment methods that encompass digital wallets, bank transfers, direct debit or prepaid cards, and many more. In fact, 17% of digital buyers aren’t willing to perform a transaction when their preferred payment type isn’t available at checkout, according to 2023 research by DHL.
It should be noted that these payment solutions can potentially differ depending on the kind of purchase and where the customer is based, among other factors. For instance, accepting Blik for customers in Poland or EPS for customers in Austria can be advantageous. While PayPal is a leading online payment method in the UK and Germany, with over 80% of digital shoppers in both countries using the service in 2024.
In terms of other markets such as LATAM, our Global Payments Outlook 2024 reveals that Pix, a popular bank transfer payment solution in Brazil, accounted for 36 billion transactions in 2023. At the same time, 40% of online transactions in Colombia will be made with the country’s trending bank transfer payment option, PSE, by 2026.
By offering locally preferred payment solutions, your customers can transact in a smoother way. Not only can this boost your sales and conversions, but it can also help nurture customer loyalty and brand trust.
4. Put customers at ease with a secure checkout
When buying online, customers want to feel that their personal and financial details are protected at all times. In fact, 25% of US consumers felt uneasy about sharing their payment information with eCommerce sites, according to a 2024 Baymard Institute study.
One efficient way to indicate that your website abides by the necessary security regulations is to display a security badge close to the payment button. Another prerequisite is to have a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificate for your website because it encrypts the cardholder data in transit to safeguard it from being compromised. It’s easy to identify such websites, as their URL starts with https:// rather than http://, thereby signalling to customers that you're protecting them. Further to this, it’s important to include a link to your privacy policy and ensure this clearly outlines how customer data will be utilised and safely managed as reassurance.
Choosing a payment service provider that can arm you with a secure payment gateway is imperative to ensure your customers’ transactions are processed in a frictionless and secure manner. Ideally, you’ll partner with a payment partner who is PCI level 1 compliant and offers a hosted payment page, allowing you to reduce your PCI burden. Specifically, the outsourcing of cardholder data to your payment service provider frees you from the need to store, process or transmit such information via your systems. Not to mention that this process can offer an additional layer of security for customer data.
Payment service providers can also offer integration solutions for security standards such as 3D Secure 2 (3DS2), which facilitates two-factor authentication. As a result, this can further mitigate the threat of payment fraud to, ultimately, help you protect your revenue. Incorporating these features will not only provide customers with peace of mind but also increase their trust in your business.
5. Provide a guest checkout option
In today’s world, shoppers are prioritising security, convenience and speed when making online purchases. Guest checkout addresses this by allowing customers to complete a payment without creating an account, helping to streamline the payment experience and reduce checkout friction.
In fact, 2023 research by DHL found that close to a third (30%) of global customers prefer guest checkout over creating an online account. Further to this, 26% of US shoppers stated they abandoned a purchase as the website wanted them to create an account in 2024, according to Baymard Institute. With this option, customers do not need to save any payment information on your website, providing a flexible way for them to make a one-off purchase and helping to alleviate specific concerns around sharing payment data.
6. Offer one-click payments
While guest checkout works well for first-time shoppers, one-click payments are a safe and convenient payment option for returning online customers, improving the checkout experience.
Through one-click payments, customers won’t need to input their payment information again after their first completed transaction on your website, thereby lessening the time and effort needed to make their purchase. By securely storing customer information on the provider’s servers and by tapping into tokenisation, eCommerce sites can enable customers to make future purchases with a single click.
While tokenisation helps make the transaction processing easier and safer, it’s more than just a security technology; it facilitates a smooth buying journey while potentially generating returning customers. eCommerce merchants can consult their payment service provider to integrate one-click payments and simplify the checkout for their customers.
7. Be transparent about shipping costs and fees
Surprising shoppers with hefty shipping costs at the checkout is likely to lead to customer distrust and frustration towards your brand. In fact, 48% of US shoppers stated they would abandon their purchase if shipping costs were too high in 2024. To effectively manage these expectations, ensure you’re transparent about how much it will cost to deliver orders and how much they need to spend to receive free shipping. This way, your customers are less likely to abandon their purchase upon being directed to the checkout page.
How emerchantpay can help you optimise your checkout page
The checkout stage is typically taken as the final point of a sale. However, if your payment page follows the best practices explored in this article, it can signal the start of a long-lasting relationship between your brand and your customers.
Having emerchantpay by your side, you can accept payments on your website with a rich suite of payment types that your customers know and trust with no fear that their sensitive data will be compromised. Additionally, with advisory and expert support from one of our dedicated Account Managers, the integration becomes a hassle-free process.
Ready to optimise your payment page and maximise your sales and conversions? Reach out to our team of payment specialists and find out how.