If you run a website that offers products or services for sale, chances are that you have a checkout and solution system embedded into the site. If you do not, then you are losing valuable business – but that’s another discussion entirely. One of the most important aspects to maintaining your business’ online influence – besides creating quality content and pinging Yahoo, Google and other search engines with your updates – is ensuring that your checkout and payment systems are streamlined and efficient. We will give you some insight into what should be done to guarantee this result for your customers.

Cart Visibility

Not only does your cart need to be easily locatable, but the items added to the cart should have optimal display as well. Start off by making sure your button or link to the cart is large and stands out; we recommend using a red background with white text that says something similar to ‘View Cart’. Upon viewing the cart, an optimal strategy is to have each item displayed on a separate line with a picture of said item to the left of the product description or title. While this sounds fairly intuitive, many sites have yet to make their cart both visible and functional for the masses.

Cart Alterations

Once somebody has added various items to their cart on your website, they may wish to go back and remove or alter quantities. Options to do this – as well as change colours or other product variables – should be available and customisable directly from the main shopping cart interface. Failure to do so can lead to confusion for your customers, which results in either extra inquiries that you have to handle or a failure to close the deal, leading to loss of revenue. By doing this, you can also negate the need for customers to tab back and forth between the cart and the products’ pages.

Streamline Information Storage

Rather than ask your customers to input their information each time they wish to place an order, set up a database and account system that collects this information and stores it for them. While most do not have payment information directly, you can save their shipping/billing address and other vital information for ensuring delivery of their products. This makes it so that each time they decide to make a purchase they only have to type out their debit, digital wallet or PayPal information. Customers will appreciate this assistance, while also being grateful that their payment information is not being stored.

Implement Online Tracking System

Instead of pinging Yahoo with updates about your site, focus on “pinging” your customers with updates about their order. Most premium merchants offer some form of package tracking that is directly implemented within their users’ accounts with the website. By doing this, you can notify users via email when their product has shipped and provide in-site tracking from their account. Users will appreciate the proactive updates on their purchases and the transparency that is offered by your site, making them even more likely to return in the future.