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An E-commmerce Checkout Checklist
By Alexis Gutzman
March 7, 2001

When was the last time you thought about your checkout process? You''ve read all the startling statistics (see The Truth Behind Shopping Cart Abandonment Rates) about how many people abandon shopping carts. But how do you know what motivates your shoppers to click away? If you''ve been in business for a while, chances are you haven''t given any thought to the checkout process since you designed it. You may, however, have implemented new technologies such as real-time chat for customer service, alternative payment systems, or memberships that have complicated your checkout process.

The checkout process should be simple: (1) let customer select products, (2) show customer cart with totals, (3) request billing (and shipping) information, (4) request payment information and final confirmation, and (5) deliver receipt and e-mail confirmation with complete order details. As simple as this seems, there are many, many places where merchants can and do go wrong. Since you may not have checked out from your own store in a while, take the time to go through the checkout process. Using this chart, you can see what you should be doing and what you may be doing that would aggravate customers.

STEP 0: LOOK ANONYMOUS What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers (You can tell I''m an old programmer here with my step zero.) Make sure there are no cookies on your machine from your site. Find your cookie file (often entitled simply cookies) and see exactly what cookies are there. Don''t get distracted and clean house now. Just delete any from your own site and proceed. If your site typically recognizes returning customers, then you''ll know your cookies are gone when you arrive at the site and it doesn''t identify you by name. If your site typically keeps carts, then the cart should be empty when you arrive.   STEP 1: SELECT PRODUCTS What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers This topic warrants an entire series of columns, but for the sake of brevity, make sure you can put products into a cart coming into your site without cookies. Once a customer has selected a product, you have a choice between showing the customer the cart with the items in it and indicating on the product detail page that the product has been added without actually going to the shopping cart page. If you go to the cart page, make sure the customer can continue shopping from the section of the store he was shopping in without renavigating the store. If you keep the customer on the product detail page, make sure you make it very clear that the product has been added so the customer doesn''t keep clicking "Add to Cart," and wondering why the site isn''t working. If you require customers to enter any personal information, other than ship-to zip code for purposes of calculating shipping charges and taxes, you won''t need to worry about abandoned carts, because many customers won''t even get that far. You''d think this goes without saying, but I was recently sent to a site by a vendor trying to show me their alternative payment method, and I couldn''t get the shopping cart to stick without signing in. (Look for me under Elmer Fudd.) I left the site angry with both the vendor and the merchant. STEP 2: SEE THE CART WITH TOTALS What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers The customer should never be more than one click from viewing the complete list of products in the cart with shipping and handling totals and tax. There are a few sites that show customers the list of products in the cart with totals in the margins of all pages, which lets the customer skip the order summary page before paying and checking out. To the degree possible, I encourage merchants to show customers what''s in the cart (at least up to two or three line items) from the margins of the page. See Staples.com for an example of a good way to do this. (Unfortunately, they break other rules, so I wouldn''t recommend you change your checkout process to be like theirs.) If you remember personal information for returning customers, give them a place to enter their IDs and passwords on this page so that they don''t have to re-key information on the next page. When the customer is ready to see his cart and checkout, you may be tempted to think you have him captive and take him through a page of related products. Don''t do it. Show related products on the detailed product description pages. Don''t get between a customer and checkout. Notice that up to this point, the merchant hasn''t asked for any personal information. It hasn''t had a right to. Only when the customer makes a commitment to make a purchase does the merchant have any business collecting personally identifiable information. STEP 3: ENTER BILLING (AND SHIPPING) INFORMATION What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers Request billing information: name, address, phone, e-mail. Ask the customer whether this is the same information that should be used for shipping. If so, populate those fields for the customer. You can ask for payment information (credit card type, number, and expiration date) here, or on the next page, as you prefer. If you categorize customers as "members" then this is the time to ask customers whether they''d like to create a unique user ID and password. A sentence or two explaining how creating an ID will make it easier and faster to checkout next time is all you need. I suggest you use the e-mail address as the user ID since that is sure to be unique and memorable. If you''re delivering electronic content, then you don''t need to know shipping information. You probably only need to know the address if you''re actually using address verification service (AVS - see Online Fraud: The Merchant''s Dilemma). Asking for more than you need or will use will turn away legitimate shoppers who simply don''t want to give away any extraneous personal information. If you do allow customers and other visitors to become members in order to take advantage of specials, receive e-mail, or have access to exclusive functionality or content, don''t ask for everything you want to know about the shopper the first time he signs up. It''s understandable that you want to know sex, income, and how many children he has, but don''t bother him for all this information until you''ve demonstrated value to him. Certainly don''t ask for it the first time he checks out. It''s far too intrusive. One final note about membership. Don''t require shoppers to become members in order to check out. Do you really want a "No, thank you" to membership to become a "No, thank you" to the sale? STEP 4: REQUEST PAYMENT INFORMATION AND FINAL PURCHASE AUTHORIZATION What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers By now you have enough information to say with certainty what the shipping charges and tax will be, if any apply. Show a receipt with all products, quantities, characteristics (colors, sizes, etc.), and prices. Show a subtotal with separate lines for shipping and handling and tax. Any information you fail to display is cause to click the back button or to click to a product page to make sure the selection is correct. Request payment information. If you store payment information, do not display the entire credit card number. Have a clearly marked button indicating that clicking there will make the purchase. Ideally, you''ve got some sort of numberline somewhere on each page of the checkout process that shows the customer where he is in the process (which often feels interminable from his perspective). As incredible as it sounds, there are sites that store payment information without asking permission before doing so, and then have the audacity to show the entire credit card number during checkout. This kind of faux pas shakes the confidence of every online shopper. STEP 5: SHOW A RECEIPT WITH AN ORDER CONFIRMATION NUMBER What Should Happen Things That Aggravate Your Customers Give the customer a receipt with an order confirmation number he can print out. Include a customer service phone number on this page as well as a link to his order status information on your site. Most customer service phone calls come after the purchase. Follow up with an e-mail message confirming the purchase (without the payment details), again showing a link to order status information on the site, a link to customer service information, and a phone number. If a customer is going to call, don''t anger him first by making him dig around your site (or even go to Whois on Network Solution''s site) to find your phone number. Make sure the e-mailed confirmation has product information on it. You''re certain to get more phone calls if you indicate that the purchase went through without telling the customer what he purchased. Don''t forget to thank the customer for shopping from you in every communication.

There are plenty of places on your site to be creative. The checkout process isn''t one of them. Create confidence in your site and your products by having a seamless, predictable checkout process.

Alexis D. Gutzman is an E-commerce Technology Author and Consultant and author of The HTML 4 Bible, FrontPage 2000 Answers!, and ColdFusion 4 for Dummies. Her newest book, The E-commerce Arsenal: 12 Technologies You Need to Prevail in the Digital Arena is now available. She can be reached at agutzman@internet.com

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