Leading e-commerce payment processor Stripe released a study of the top 100 sites in the US and Canada, testing the checkout process against a script of pre-defined errors. The study, done in conjunction with Edgar, Dunn, and Co., found that 96% of e-commerce sites had at least five errors on their platform that created unnecessary friction for consumers in the checkout process. The study also included insights from 200 consumers in North America that yielded corresponding results: while 40% said that they had doubled their e-commerce shopping since 2020, 20% said they would abandon e-commerce altogether if the checkout process took longer than one minute, and 17% said they specifically abandoned at least one shopping cart in the last year because the checkout process took too long, or was too complicated.
“Our analysis shows that basic checkout issues are widespread, even among the top companies in North America that likely have dedicated teams focused on conversion rates,” Stripe researchers said in the report. “When optimizing your checkout flow, you could try to prevent issues on your own and divert development resources to focus solely on your checkout experience.”
The study notes that even small changes can significantly improve the checkout process. For example, a simple messaging change from “your card was declined,” to “your card was declined, please try a different card” improved retry rates by 3.5%.
The study comes at a difficult time for many e-commerce retailers who are already struggling to apply more filters and algorithms to weed out an increasing number of fraudulent transactions. Merchants that apply fraud controls unilaterally risk losing sales as they add layers of complexity and friction to the checkout process. It’s critical for e-commerce retailers to use analytics to understand the attributes of risky transactions and only apply additional filters or controls as needed. Merchants should consider engaging an outside firm with direct experience in this process to ensure that they get the right controls in place that will guard against fraud without creating unwanted friction for consumers.
Overview by Don Apgar, Director, Merchant Services Advisory Practice at Mercator Advisory Group
