How to Make It Easy for Customers to Buy from Your Website

If it's not easy to buy from your website, you're going to lose sales. Many websites experience shopping cart drop-out rates as high as 50%. That means that as much as half of the people who've decided to buy never actually finished the checkout process. Instead, they got bored or frustrated and left.

There are a few simple things you can do to help prevent this from happening on your own website.

=> Make the Checkout's Design Continuous

If your checkout page looks drastically different than the rest of your site, you're probably going to experience higher shopping cart drop-out rates.

Customers want to feel like they're buying from you. If the moment they click the buy button they're suddenly taken to a page that looks nothing like your site, they're probably going to feel less comfortable putting in their credit card information.

Amazon does this brilliantly. From beginning to end, it's very clear that you're buying from Amazon.

Some shopping carts like 1ShoppingCart offer a lot of customization, making it easy to match your checkout page to the rest of your site. Others, like ClickBank or 2Checkout make it a bit harder.

=> Ease of Navigation

Another key factor is the ease of navigation throughout your site.

Make sure all the products are easy to find. Use a breadcrumb system so people can find their way back to previous pages quickly.

Place buy buttons in prominent places throughout the website. The moment someone decides to buy, it should be dead simple for them to find a buy button and click on it.

Have a friend of two browse your site and buy a product. Watch them throughout the process. Look for where they get stuck or snagged and aim to improve the process.

=> Accept All Forms of Payment

Different people like to pay in different ways. Some people like to use their credit cards. Others like to use PayPal. Still others prefer a good old-fashioned check.

Make it easy for your customers by accepting orders of all sorts. PayPal isn't difficult to set up. Taking checks takes a little bit more effort, but in the end it is worth it. Make sure to also make it easy for American Express users to buy from your site.

Furthermore, if you're selling high-end items, consider offering a payment plan. A payment plan could drastically increase your sales, simply by helping more people afford your product.

=> Making It Easy to Buy

The hardest part of selling to a customer is getting them to want to buy. Don't let the process get snagged up by something as simple as the checkout process.

Make your shopping cart's checkout design continuous with your site. Make it easy for them to find the buy buttons and make your payment options friendly to as many people as possible.