How to Optimize Your Shopping Cart Page: Best Practices for Improved Performance

If you ever experienced shopping on Amazon Prime Day in 2015, chances are you came across “#PrimeDayFail.” Shopping cart failure on the Amazon website just spiraled, making online shopping a hassle for many customers. 

Since then, Amazon has been delivering high-quality shopping experiences. However, the Prime Day experience was a crucial point in the history of eCommerce for Amazon and many other businesses.

Delivering a good shopping experience requires your site to work on all fronts. So, if your website UI is doing excellent, but the backend is not delivering, the shopping cart experience can go for a toss. 

However, there are many reasons for shopping cart failure. This article will help you understand critical reasons for shopping cart failure on eCommerce websites and best practices to improve user experience. 

Impact of cart web page failures on your website

The shopping cart page is the most crucial aspect of your eCommerce website. Users execute the purchase of products on the cart web page. This is why there is a significant impact of shopping cart web page failure on your website, such as

Lower conversions

If your cart web page fails to load and function, customers will abandon it. Customers can switch to competitors or postpone purchase decisions due to failure on the web page. This can impact your sales and lead to higher cart abandonment rates. 

Reputation damage

Cart web page failure can dent your reputation as an eCommerce platform. Your customer will not trust the brand to make purchases, reducing sales. So, any brand needs to manage its reputation. This is why you need to improve the checkout page performance for your eCommerce website.

High cart abandonments

Cart abandonment is a significant challenge for any eCommerce business. Cart abandonment describes the scenario where a user leaves the page before completing the desired action, from downloading an eBook to making a purchase. 

Higher cart page failures can lead to cart abandonments. However, web page failure is one of many reasons that can affect cart abandonments. When you analyze cart abandonment reasons, everything from extra costs, shipping expenses, and payment security to the need for user logins to place an order comes into play.

#1. Unexpected expenses

Hidden costs can annoy them and lead to cart abandonment when customers order. Such expenses can include extra taxes, shipping costs, and convenience fees. Another significant issue is recommended add-ons. Many eCommerce websites recommend products coupled with the ones customers want to buy.

While cross-selling your products is a great strategy, it can lead to cart abandonment if the recommendations are irrelevant. So, you need to develop advanced algorithms that can help provide relevant recommendations. Another critical aspect is making your customer aware of extra costs beforehand or even providing discounts.

#2. Lack of guest logins

The speed of placing an order is crucial for conversions in eCommerce websites. If your checkout page only allows users to place an order if they log in to the account, it increases the time required to complete the purchase. This leads to customers leaving the cart or often needing to complete the purchase.

ECommerce businesses can resolve these issues through social media logins. Another way to resolve these issues is to install trustworthy digital certificates, which secure your website from data leaks during guest logins.

#3. Payment security

Payment security is crucial for any business, not just for customer trust but also to comply with data regulations and standards like PCI DSS. However, the impact of payment security on customer trust and cart abandonment is higher. Online payments on eCommerce websites have several elements; each must be secure.

For example, an essential aspect of eCommerce payments is the payment gateway, which needs to be secure and reliable. There are many payment gateways that you can choose to facilitate secure payments, like Stripe, Square, or Paypal.

Another approach is enabling an authentication mechanism that only intended users can access sensitive information to complete the purchase.

#4. UI/UX glitches

A significant issue with many eCommerce checkout pages is accidental clicks. These accidental clicks can lead to cart abandonment as customers can’t risk losing money over some product they don’t want to pay for. 

For example, if you are searching for a gaming console and, by mistake, add a wired console instead of the one you need. Now, if the checkout page has accidental clicks or is not responsive enough, you may pay for something you don’t need. So, to avoid such a scenario, you will abandon the cart.

#5. Product research

Many customers do extensive research before they make a purchasing decision. Customers add products to their cart and abandon them for more research. Some of the products are also stuck in the buy later or Wishlist. 

This increases cart abandonment, leading to lower conversions for businesses. E-commerce businesses can improve product descriptions, reviews, and smarter recommendations to avoid such scenarios. 

Overcoming the above challenges of cart abandonment and improving the shopping experience requires companies to execute best practices. 

Best practices to enhance cart page performance for your eCommerce websites

Optimizing your shopping cart requires a foundation design that enhances user experience and interface. So, the first best practice to follow for your cart web page is optimizing the UX.

#1. Optimize your UX:

When you optimize the user experience for the shopping cart page, it needs a clearer and faster UI. You can use a three-step method to improve the user experience for your shopping cart web page called the CSF or Clear, Simple, and Fast.

Make your checkout page clear with all the relevant information that a customer will need to complete the purchase. Your cart page’s design must also be simple to navigate for any user.  Further, you need to ensure the page loads faster because customers will have a better page experience if it loads quickly.

#2. Summarize your product better

When a user decides to buy the product, the checkout page needs a better product summary that helps them purchase quickly. 

For example, the above product is placed on Amazon’s shopping cart web page. It summarizes the earphones with phrases like “headphones wired with mic” and provides “HIFI Deep Bass.”

You can design your web page and create product summaries that help customers quickly review what they want to buy.

#3. Choose an easy design!

Branding colors and web page designs need to align with your business goals. However, you must also remember the color code, which provides more uniformity across the website. For example, if you have an eCommerce website for fashion apparel, keeping the site design simple and elegant matters.

For example, the Gucci checkout page follows the same color code the entire website has: white and black. It offers a uniform experience for your customers, and its simple design will also boost loading speeds. 

#4. Ensure website security

Enabling security for your checkout web page is crucial for better conversions and improving customer trust and association. Apart from the trust part, you also need to consider the cost of a data breach. For example, a survey suggests that retail sector data breaches can lead to $2.9 million in expenses. 

There are many ways to secure your checkout web page from data leaks and cyberattacks, such as,

• Multi-factor authentication is an approach that can help you authenticate user access to data through an extra layer of security. For example, you can leverage an extra-factor authentication process where users will receive a passcode or phrases on the personal device to verify their identity for data access. 
• Install SSL certificates to secure the connection between the browser and server for better payment security. You can find valid SSL certificates for your website from leading certificate authorities like Comodo or DigiCert. Many different options are available for SSL certificates based on your business requirements.
• Code sanitization analyzes the website code, both frontend and backend, to sanitize harmful codes affecting the website. To identify problems with the code, you need extensive testing of the website.

#5. Create a hierarchical structure.

Customers need a hierarchy of information for their final checkout process, like what the product is, how much the shipping cost is, estimated delivery time, address, and financial details. When designing the cart pages, ensure the logical navigation follows a specific hierarchical structure.

Here are some tips to ensure a hierarchical structure for the checkout page:

• Use different colors for each CTA to highlight it
• Make information text bold to highlight important information
• Leverage structure and columns to structure the page design

#6. Add a chatbot.

Most cart abandonments occur when customers are stuck on specific steps and need assistance. To provide instant help for your customers, you can integrate a chatbot that offers instant help depending on the particular use case. 

For example, if your customer wants to complete the checkout process and the transaction is denied, it can lead to financial issues. A chatbot can understand the problems that customers face and provide instant support.

Key takeaways

For an eCommerce website, a secure checkout process is crucial. However, you must consider many aspects before designing the checkout page. For example, you must consider CTAs, color codes, hierarchical structure, payment security, and testing requirements. 

Make sure you analyze the performance of the eCommerce cart web page on varying loads and design it accordingly. Based on specific requirements, you can use best practices to improve the entire checkout experience.