5 Checkout Metrics You Can’t Ignore in 2020 (Shopify Edition)
Your eCommerce checkout experience is the most important part of your customer journey – it’s the critical stage where the customer makes the final decision on whether or not they will complete a purchase.
If you’re unsure of how well your checkout is performing, there’s a good chance you’re losing considerable revenue.
But don’t worry, this is also an opportunity to identify what’s working (and what’s not), so that you can make the improvements necessary to help more of your shoppers convert.
In this guide, we’ll go over the 5 most important eCommerce checkout metrics you need to be tracking, how you can calculate them, and steps you can take to grow new sales with checkout intelligence.
Even though we wrote this guide for Shopify, it’s generally applicable to all eCommerce stores. Let’s begin…
1) Cart Abandonment
Your marketing team works hard to bring visitors to your store, so it’s understandably frustrating when shoppers add items to the cart only to change their minds shortly after and decide not to buy anything.
Neglecting the friction causing this behavior is likely to spring a revenue leak that will likely only get worse over time.
What is Cart Abandonment Rate?
Cart Abandonment Rate (CAR) is the percentage of customers who add items to the cart but then abandon it before completing the purchase.
It shows the rate of interested potential customers who leave without buying anything compared to the total number of shopping carts created.
Mobile has the highest cart abandonment rates, with over 85% of all transactions ending without a purchase (Source: Barilliance).
The simpler your checkout process, the lower the cart abandonment rate, and the better your conversion rate. To do that, you need to eliminate unnecessary elements and ask for less information: https://t.co/Wbwpi8xtnf
— Bread (@BreadFinance) June 1, 2020
How is it calculated?
Calculating CAR is a great way to perform a health check at the top of your checkout funnel.
Here’s a simple formula you can use to do so:
CART ABANDONMENT RATE = (NUMBER OF CARTS – NUMBER OF ORDERS) / NUMBER OF CARTS
Our Shopify app picks for combating Cart Abandonment:
- Privy (Exit Popups, Email, Cart Recovery)
- PushOwl (Smart Push Marketing)
- Give & Grow (Donations, Customer Loyalty)
2) Checkout Engagement
Proportionally, the more shoppers who start the checkout process, the more of them will complete the purchase. This metric isn’t as well known as the first on our list, but it plays an important role in tracking how well your store bridges the gap between cart and checkout.
What is Checkout Engagement Rate?
Checkout Engagement Rate (CER) is the percentage of customers who started the checkout process after reaching the cart page.
A low CER doesn’t necessarily kill your overall experience rating, as some eCommerce sites automatically move shoppers to the cart page as soon as they add a product to the cart. This inflates the number of sessions that can initiate checkout and artificially reduces the CER.
This metric plays a small but nevertheless essential role in determining your overall performance rating. See below for a breakdown of the scoring system we use when analyzing our clients’ checkout funnels…
- Cart Abandonment Rate,
- Checkout Engagement Rate,
- Checkout Conversion Rate,
- Accelerated Checkout Rate, and
- Mobile Abandonment Gap.
(Related link: Checkout Zen™ scoring)
How is it calculated?
Checkout Engagement Rate is a good indicator of how effective your cart page is at initiating the checkout process.
Here’s the formula used to calculate this metric:
CHECKOUT ENGAGEMENT RATE = NUMBER OF SESSIONS THAT STARTED CHECKOUT / NUMBER OF VISITS THAT REACHED CART PAGE
Our Shopify app picks for improving Checkout Engagement:
- Free Shipping & Hello Bar (Customizable Bar Design, Dynamic Messaging)
- SMART Scarcity Countdown Timer (Increase Average Order Value)
- Tidio Live Chat (Live Chat, Marketing Automation)
3) Checkout Conversion
While Cart Abandonment Rate measures the performance of the top of your checkout funnel, checkout conversion focuses on the middle and bottom.
What is Checkout Conversion Rate?
Checkout Conversion Rate (CCR) is the percentage of customers who complete the checkout process after they initially start it.
Technically speaking, this section of the checkout funnel is the most complicated and data entry-intensive area.
The smallest amount of friction here can have a significant negative impact on revenue.
How is it calculated?
A low CCR is one of the biggest challenges merchants face in checkout optimization, as it directly correlates with growth.
Here’s how to calculate this metric:
CHECKOUT CONVERSION RATE = NUMBER OF SESSIONS THAT COMPLETED CHECKOUT / NUMBER OF SESSIONS THAT STARTED CHECKOUT
Our Shopify app picks for boosting Checkout Conversions:
- One-Click Checkout (Buy Now, Skip Cart)
- Oxi Social Login (Increased Conversion)
- Sumo (Incentives)
4) Accelerated Checkout
PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, and other fast ways to complete online purchases have brought increased convenience to eCommerce experiences.
Merchants are realizing that these are tied to increasing revenues, and in turn, need a way to track and figure out which of these they should integrate in their checkout for maximum benefit to their customers.
What is Accelerated Checkout Rate?
Accelerated Checkout Rate (ACR) is the ratio between visitors who successfully completed payment using one of the digital payment options and all completed transactions.
How is it calculated?
Here’s how to find out your ACR:
ACCELERATED CHECKOUT RATE = NUMBER OF TRANSACTIONS WITH DIGITAL PAYMENTS / NUMBER OF ALL TRANSACTIONS
Shopify guides on enabling digital payments:
5) Mobile Abandonment Gap
With the rapid rise of mobile shopping, merchants must determine if their mobile experience is subpar or risk losing millions in potential revenue.
What is Mobile Abandonment Gap?
Mobile Abandonment Gap (MAG) indicates the difference in effectiveness between your CAR for mobile and your CAR for desktop.
Interesting insights into #uxdesign – how to use color, animation and touch in your mobile apps to boost user engagement #interfacedesign #userexperiencehttps://t.co/ah5ghUqjIJ
— Lenka Pitonakova (@l_pitonakova) June 17, 2020
How is it calculated?
Here’s the formula for MAG:
MOBILE ABANDONMENT GAP = CART ABANDONMENT RATE FOR MOBILE – CART ABANDONMENT RATE FOR DESKTOP
Our Shopify app picks for closing your Mobile Abandonment Gap:
-
- Accelerated Mobile Pages (Simple, Fast)
- Mobile Menu (Increase Sales)
- Quick Announcement Bar (Advanced Targeting)
Start Monitoring and Improving Your Shopify Checkout Experience
Clearly, there’s a lot that goes into the perfect checkout – but that doesn’t mean it should be hard for merchants to know where they stand.
Checkouts used to simply be about collecting money from visitors online – once it generally worked, teams pretty much forgot about it.
Today, the best Checkout is unique to every brand and understands how shoppers buy.
That’s why we created Checkout Zen – a new Shopify app for merchants that automatically tracks all 5 of these crucial metrics for you – and we didn’t stop there.
Have our patented-AI learn how your visitors use your Checkout. Then you’ll see a customized dashboard – including a Score that grades your Checkout relative to the industry – with automated recommendations on how to fix your Checkout.
Checkout Zen is available now on Shopify, and it’s free to install.
Checkout = the new #1 skill eCommerce.https://t.co/I8VKhoufAE
— HiConversion (@HiConversion) June 18, 2020
