How should you approach split-testing your checkout process?

This question was asked of Bryan Eisenberg in yesterday’s Google Website Optimizer webinar. Bryan recommended split-path testing, reducing the number of steps in your process and using your analytics data to determine what part of your checkout path needs attention.

What is Split-Path Testing?

The definition of a split-path test, according to GrokDotCom:

Split-Path Test — This test will split your traffic among different linear paths containing multiple pages for each path. This is different in that you’re testing the performance of grouped pages against other grouped pages. For example, you could test a checkout process by splitting it into two variations; one with four steps (or pages), and another with only three steps. Each variation of grouped pages will have the same Goal Page (e.g., order confirmation page). Once the data is collected, the winning checkout process will be the one that converted a higher percentage of visitors.

Reducing Checkout Steps

Different ecommerce stores have different checkout paths, ranging from one-page AJAX checkouts to 6 steps or more. Bryan believes less is more - in fact, he recommends going under 4 steps. But you can find out for yourself if this is so for your website by doing your own testing.

I’ve gathered some examples of checkout steps (many are generally the same aside from labeling) that can give you some ideas for how to simplify your process. For example, you may want to test a new path with a combined billing and shipping page vs. your existing separate steps. Or you may want to ditch a step that may be clogging your funnel, such as “Rewards Program.”

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve research, interviewed and written a case study about one of New Zealand’s largest and oldest retailers - a sort of Sears Roebuck to make a North American comparison. I suggest Sears because the ‘over-a-century-old’ appliance and electronics retailer Bond + Bond built their business - in part - by getting products, which otherwise would only be available to urban dwellers, to the rural communities.

In the case study, Linda Geary (business development manager for parent company Noel Leeming Group) emphasized time and again the reason for building out the website the way they did - the customer.

As she points out (in no uncertain terms):

“The long term holistic view of retail suggests that customers will choose their natural channel at the time of purchase and may change at will using a hybrid or mixture of channels. The point is, it’s the customers choice.”

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Elastic Path’s Jason Billingsley and Netconcepts‘ Stephan Spencer. (along with a cameo by EP’s Gord Janzen) presented this webinar to accompany the white paper and research series called The Ecommerce Checkout Report (free download).

The report inspected the Top 100 online retailers and reviewed for 23 tactics commonly used in Checkout. The results attempt to begin a dialog in order to answer questions like: Does a shorter checkout process really decrease shopping cart abandonment? Should you use an order confirmation screen? Does live chat improve conversions? Study samples included a variety of vertical market groups including apparel and accessories, computers and electronics, and both high and low ticket value product retailers.

See also:

nitobi’s Robot Replay

Jason’s post on travel “Stop the checkout to save the customer money?“

Everyone gets distracted when shopping online. That’s one of the nice things about shopping via the web - you can take a phone call, refill your coffee, walk the dog, quick nap in the hammock … then come back and your order is still there. The flip side of this scenario is the theme of sorts for Crazy, Messed-up World of Ecommerce video #7 “Abandoned.”

Video #7 - Abandoned

For online retailers though, abandoned carts are the root of endless worry and concern. These conversion killers piling up in your logs beg questions like: Why did they leave? Were they just comparing prices or features or is it something I did? Maybe there’s something wrong with my site’s usability! How can I make it better? How can I get them back? How can I raise my conversion rates? Would adding “wishlists” or “saved cart” features reduce cart abandonment? and so on …

Well for sure usability is important (check The Ecommerce Checkout Report for more on best practisesc) and certainly retailers loathe leaving money on the table, but sometimes, cart abandonment just happens. Just hope they come back, right?

OK I really laughed out loud on this one. In Price Checked, Mark, as the clueless cashier, harasses the fetching customer “Jen” for personal info before he’ll tell her cart’s total. Mark really gets his cheese on for this one and emanates the tact and charm of a creepy small town used car salesman (apologies in advance to all smal town used car salesfolks).

Anyhow, this topic of ‘when should sites ask for personal info?’ touches on privacy, ID security, logistics, as well as, well … tact. Not knowing the final tally is a personal pet peeve for me when shopping online … I simply ask for the REAL GRAND TOTAL, with tax and shipping, before surrendering my name, rank and credit card number. Sheesh, is it so hard?

Certainly, some etailers want to capture this info in order to oblige you into making a purchase and also send you newsletters, coupons, offers, … but in reality, this lack of transparency is just annoying (and almost insulting) to increasingly sophisticated shoppers.

My (radical) opinion is: if you show a running total (with tax/shipping estimates) shoppers will abandon less and buy more since the mystery is removed. Of course I might be totally wrong - anyone have a study on this?

P.S. Remember, … ambitious bloggers can win online shopping goodness and, if you haven’t seen it already seen it, check out Darren Barefoot’s Iphatigue.com parody.

Video #5 - Price Checked

This morning, we circulated a press release about the Ecommerce Checkout Report and the forthcoming companion Webinar to the report. PRWeb does a great job of making the press releases more social with insta-links to share, save, and publicize via many social bookmarking and aggregater tools. Plus Jason’s mug shot is attached - great for desktop wallpaper!

But really, … Check out the ready made pdf of the Ecommerce Checkout Report as well and/or subscribe to the Elastic Path Press Release RSS feed or just read the spiel here and ’socialize it’ if desired.

New Ecommerce Research Sheds Light on Checkout Myths

The study looks at ecommerce checkout strategies at the Top 100 Online Retailers to determine which tactics are used most and work best. The report is free to download and requires no registration. A companion webinar, hosted by report researcher Jason Billingsley of Elastic Path Software and web marketing expert Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts, will be held May 17th, 12pm ET to discuss the findings in depth with full attendee interaction.

Vancouver, BC (PRWEB) May 9, 2007 — We assume a prominent return policy, site security badge, and shorter checkout process will lead to an increased conversion rate, but is this truly the case? Many online retailers are both time crunched and resource strained. They are unable to legitimately test which tactics do and do not work. Unfortunately, when determining which best practices to adopt, decisions are often based on hunches and not fact.

A new report evaluates the checkout strategies of the Top 100 Internet Retailers and seeks the correlations between the checkout tactics and success rates. The Ecommerce Checkout Report observed top performing online stores for 23 specific checkout characteristics affecting the customer experience in three categories 1) speed and ease of use; 2) security and confidence; and, 3) profit enhancement.

The report attempts to answer questions like: Does a shorter checkout process really decrease shopping cart abandonment? Should you use an order confirmation screen? Does live chat improve conversions? Study samples included a variety of vertical market groups including apparel and accessories, computers and electronics, and both high and low ticket value product retailers.

Interesting findings within the report:

• Conversion rates were nearly double at retailers selling high ticket priced items when coupon code entry was not available.
• Conversion rates were a full 40% higher where Top 100 retailers did not request a CVV (Card Verification Value), yet over 55% of them do.
• 36% of Top 100 retailers offer alternative payment options such as PayPal, Bill Me Later, or Google Checkout, but conversion rates were convincingly higher at retailers who did not offer alternative payment types - more than double at retailers selling high ticket value items.

Principal report researcher, Jason Billingsley of Elastic Path Software — an ecommerce software vendor, explains, “Our goal with this report is to give online retailers a yardstick for comparing the effectiveness of their own checkout strategies. Hopefully, it will give them incentive to start testing tactics that seem to be most effective for increasing conversions.”Beyond the complimentary report, readers can hear anecdotal commentary at an upcoming Webinar on May 17 at 12 p.m. ET with panelists Jason Billingsley and noted industry expert Stephan Spencer of Netconcepts. Webinar registration is free and the format will allow for questions to the experts. The collected conversations will form the basis of a follow up prescriptive report including objective recommendations for improving conversion rates in specific industries.

Read The Ecommerce Checkout Report and companion blog series (no registration is required):
Ecommerce Checkout Report and companion blog series

Sign up for the interactive webinar:
Ecommerce Checkout Report Webinar

ecommerce online+retail etail elastic+path conversions conversion+rates white+paper retail+tips net+concepts webinar netconcepts

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UK etailers and online shoppers now have another means to complete purchases as Google launched its “Checkout” payment system Thursday (April 12th). Hitherto available just to US customers, Google aims to expand its reach and offer some serious competition to eBay’s PayPal which is well established as a market leader in this integrated payment space.

Despite entering the fray relatively late and having a batch of technical foibles to overcome in early days, Google Checkout stands a great chance of keeping even more consumer traffic within the Google sphere of influence. Ergo, shoppers might click on an etailer’s Google AdWord (making Google money in the process) then make payments through the Google check out (again benefiting Google) while also contributing to Google’s ability to cross-reference and aggregate consumer patterns and tastes.

Don’t get me wrong, this baked-in process can certainly build conveniences and efficiencies into the shopping process and, with Google massive corps of engineers, I suspect problems will be sorted out in due process. Further, Google’s deep pockets and cross-market clout will help build confidence against the biggest problem, fraud.

Indeed, many auction users have been approached with all sorts of schemes requiring payments by money order, wire transfer or one-off e-payments via PP or others. By being the pioneer, PayPal caught the brunt of the scammer’s most clever trickery and according to BBC article ” Google unveils UK payments system” PayPal’s challenge could be an advantage for Google,

Google is also trying to take advantage of what could be Paypal’s biggest reputational risk.

As market leader and provider of a fully-integrated payments system - running transactions and transferring money directly between buyers’ and sellers’ bank accounts - Paypal is by far the biggest target for fraudsters and abuse of its service.

Google Checkout, in contrast, works solely as a wrapper for regular credit and debit card transactions, offering to simplify the process by storing card data and shipping information centrally.

Its staff promise that they will “make buyers whole” if they suffer fraud, as well as representing retailers when they face the risk of losing money when a deal goes wrong.

My major concern is how closely Google is looking at purchasing habits and comparing them against your other online activities and profiles. Sure this could result in more relevant ad placements but also a bit of uneasiness from simply too much information floating around Google’s massive databases. What have you purchased that you’d prefer not to be marketed about?

But I like choice (and you probably do too) and Google Checkout is designed to be an option, not an absolute. Again from BBC:

Google’s Obi Felton is also at pains to stress that Google Checkout buttons tend to sit alongside retailers’ other payment methods when it comes time for the customer to pay, rather than trying to supplant them.

Google’s soft-sell means shoppers can choose whichever method they prefer to pay and that ability to choose pleases me.

Do you want to see which checkout tactics are most used by successful online retailers? How does your conversion rate stack up to those who employ similar tactics? Does a shorter checkout process really decrease shopping cart abandonment? Should you use an order confirmation screen? Does live chat improve conversions? These are a few of the 23 tactics we evaluated as we studied the checkout process of the Internet’s Top 100 Online Retailers.

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I’ve recently produced a “feature tour” presentation designed to be a self-paced overview of all Elastic Path 5 features and benefits without technical jargon and acronyms and low on marketing double-speak. Really a scrapbook tour of what it looks like to shop an EP5 built store and how the back-end is managed and finally, how the catalog and merchandising is set-up.

The one acronym which does appear (OK, maybe there are two) is AJAX - meaning Asyncronous Javascript And XHTML - this is a technique rather than a technology or a product. I played with the AJAX-ified pieces of EP5 while screen-shooting *everything* for the presentation and the neat thing is, you don’t really notice the AJAX’ed bits, just that the site is clipping along as fast as you can click.

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AJAX World Magazine picked up the press release Elastic Path Software Announces AJAX-Powered One Page Checkout for Online Stores about Elastic Path’s new AJAX-i-fied One Page checkout tool.

While the technology which drives the software is cool and innovative, the increased functional utility to the customer is what really makes One Page an exciting announcement for Elastic Path. Even the analysts agree.

“When retailers provide simple and streamlined web sites, with hassle-free checkout, online shoppers are much more likely to buy,” said Alex Fletcher, lead industry analyst at The Entiva Group.

“While consumers are not necessarily aware of the driving technology behind an ecommerce site, they appreciate capabilities such as dynamically updated totals and an easier shopping experience that are made possible by an AJAX-powered checkout. Elastic Path’s One Page technology will reduce shopping cart abandonment for its customers as online shoppers are more apt to buy if the process is quick, easy, and forthcoming.

Well that’s nice, but exactly what is it that One Page actually does to reduce abandonment and increase conversions?

Elastic Path One Page provides customers with a constant snapshot of order details. The contents of the shopping cart can be adjusted at any time without losing existing data, enabling customers to see the effect of an applied promotion code without ever leaving the checkout process.

Additionally, by maintaining a small size footprint, Elastic Path One Page loads in under half the time of competing flash-based offerings, enabling retailers to provide an optimal shopping experience without demanding the presence of finicky browser plug-ins.

Exciting stuff - small, responsive and intuitive. Fortunately, eager and progressive retailers only have to wait until November 2006 to get their hands on it.