Simplified Checkout?

Has anyone implemented a simplified checkout?

One or two steps instead of the current five step process would be nice and beneficial for customer/order retention. :)

One in particular that is nice is InCase.... http://goincase.com

I just placed an order there for something this evening and was struck by how fast and simple the checkout process was.

One step would be very helpfull since the checkout process does feel extremely long, but for the users who have adapted this form would have to be adjusted since we have a paypal method set-up that is catered to us

I don't have a problem with the various screens, since I have seen worse on other sites.  That includes amazon.com.
What I would like to see it the Billing and Shipping side by side and not in a row.  We get tons of morons that place gift orders with the billing and shipping address being the one of the recipient.  They then add a gift message and use their own email address, which half of the time reveals their name.  That and those that send us emails with what they want and their credit card information.  What can I say the average internet user is stupid (but they do have money).  You can lead the horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.  We now have all our email messages going out stating that we are not responsible for stolen cards due to user stupidity.  Well we used nicer words, but you get the point.  The simpler the better.  That goes for cooking as well.  LOL

I certainly agree that amazon's checkout process is worse!

And I also agree that simpler is better.

Hi everyone,

I'm seeing more and more great discussions on our forums. We're very happy about the fact that the ProductCart community is getting more active every day.

I wanted to share some thoughts on this interesting debate about the checkout process.

There are major, major players in this industry that - through their store design - seem to indicate that exactly the opposite is true. That is: putting everything onto one page creates a high level of confusion as there are too many pieces of information to review and digest on the same screen.

For example, remember that a giant like Amazon - over $14 billion in sales in 2007 - uses a multi-step + big buttons + big font checkout process (probably for that very reason).

Also, don't forget that of the most of the top 10 online retailers in the US use a multi-step checkout process as well.

Although there are those that claim that a shorter checkout process works better (they claim that it can help lower the drop-off rate), empirical evidence from reviewing the largest, most successful retailers in the world seems to suggest exactly the opposite.

In my view, this is simply NOT a crucial element in determining the drop-off rate. People drop-off for other reasons. When I drop-off, it's always for other reasons... mostly the purchasing "guilt factor" :-)

Studies show that customers that begin the checkout process mostly drop-off due to high shipping costs. Not because the checkout process contained too many steps. In fact, in the most recent study I've seen, the length or type of checkout process, is not even mentioned!

Check out this interesting report:




That said, we constantly monitor the industry as well as customer feedback and we may make changes to the checkout system in ProductCart in the future, when and if it becomes apparent that it could substantially improve the user experience.

In the meantime, I recommend focusing on other, much more important issues such as reducing the average bounce rate on your Web site's most popular landing pages, starting with the home page (for some ideas, check out this brief home page design workshop that I recently wrote, if you have a few minutes).

I hope this helps. Keep contributing to the forums!

Cheers,

Massimo Arrigoni
Early Impact