How to Improve Checkout UX | 6 eCommerce Apps You Should Be Using Today

Checkout UX is what ultimately determines revenue success. You can have a great site but if your checkout stinks, you’re going to have a tough time completing sales.  

Not long ago, eCommerce sites could afford to overlook the last step of the purchasing funnel. This year, it’s the one thing brands can’t ignore if they want to win more customers. Here are a few reasons why: 

• More digital traffic = more opportunities to make sales 
• Sites will have to perform at their best or risk losing to competitors 
• Tighter budgets will call for flexible payment options 

A bad or frustrating checkout experience can make or break a customer’s relationship with your brand (and cost the business a lot of money). 

Fortunately, there have never been more ways to know where your checkout UX stands. In this article, we’ll cover 6 apps that use data, content, analytics, and even social media to help make the most critical step of the buying experience more efficient. 

1 | Bolt

Online retailers face a big challenge in getting shoppers to complete a transaction once they’ve initiated the checkout process. Unfortunately, nearly 70 percent of the time, they don’t. And it’s getting expensive for retailers to figure out how to capture every customer. 

Bolt is building a better than Amazon-like checkout experience for the rest of the web, with zero fraud and payments built-in.

So glad to be an investor in @bolt, the virtuous cycle of companies increasing their margins due to higher e-commerce conversion rates will make it weird to *not* use Bolt in the next few years. @RyanBreslow & @ericmfeldman Biggest thing for ecommerce merchants since Paypal

— Joey Krug (@joeykrug) January 29, 2019

Bolt’s checkout experience platform addresses the problems retailers face with optimizing conversions, managing hundreds of integrations and the rising risk of fraud. It’s not a replacement for the shopping cart platform, but rather a compliment that integrates with the vast majority of the major platforms (Magento, BigCommerce, etc.) 

The brand is also backed by an ecosystem of trusted tech partners such as PayPal and Stripe. Most recently, Bolt has announced a $50M Series C round of funding that’s sure to help them further their mission of democratizing eCommerce.

2 | Copytesting 

 

According to Dave Gerhardt, CMO at Privy (#1 Sales App on Shopify), copywriting is the most important skill in marketing today – so how do you know if your copy is converting visitors into buyers?  

Copytesting helps you understand where your copy falls flat, what key information is missing, and where the overall doubts are. Once you understand the issues, you can fix them, and increase your revenue. 

After all, for most products, it’s the copy that makes people want to buy it. 

This! >> @unbounce data science findings (40k landing pages) show copy (28%) was 2x as influential as design (13%) in why visitors converted.

— Oli Gardner (@oligardner) May 27, 2020

Here are some important questions to ask about your eCommerce site’s copy: 

• What does your headline make them feel?
• Do they care about the arguments you’re making?
• Which benefits are they most interested in?
• Do they even understand the copy in the third paragraph?
• What remains unclear? 

 Copytesting is the only tool that gives you answers from your actual target audience—in a matter of hours.  

The app also gives merchants the power to address issues with add-to-cart rate and product descriptions using quantified data from real people. 

3 | StorifyMe

 

Content and social media are incredibly important for brands today, yet we are still only scratching the surface of what is possible when it comes to capturing more sales using these tools. 

“64% of customers prefer the tappable mobile web story format over its scrolling article equivalent.” – Joint study by Forrester and Google in 2019 

StorifyMe gives you a better way to interact with your audience using stories. Stories deliver an immersive mobile-first experience that captivate users and increase the chances of a successful checkout. 

This app makes it easy to:  

• Create, publish, and measure the impact of your stories. 
• Drive loyalty, engagement, and conversion. 
• Generate more traffic with dynamic content. 

Many retailers are struggling to get their mobile checkouts up to par with desktop, and StorifyMe presents an opportunity close the gap.

4 | Sezzle 

 

One of the most interesting challenges in eCommerce today is the fact that 67% of young buyers don’t have credit cards – how can retailers empower these consumers with a different way to pay?  

Trusted by more than 16,000 retail partners, Sezzle unlocks access to millions of shoppers and increases merchant partners’ sales without risk by allowing shoppers to split their purchases into four, interest-free payments paid over the course of six weeks. Doing so increases shoppers’ purchasing power and offers them a built-in way to budget their spending.  

Sezzle by the numbers: 

• 55% of abandoned carts are due to too high of a total cost of purchase 
• Melt Cosmetics Average Order Value (AOV) increased by 30% after adding Sezzle 
• 6% of abandoned carts are due to lack of payment options 
• Jared Lang saw a 20% increase in sales after adding Sezzle

By providing a new, tried and trusted form of payment that is simple and easy to use, this app opens doors for merchants to sell to a previously untapped segment of the market. 

5 | Okendo 

 

Customer reviews matter. Why? They are a form of social proof. 

In a study by iPerceptions, it was revealed that 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site that has user reviews. 

Enter Okendo, the new standard in customer reviews. 1,500+ high-growth retailers use Okendo to build shopper trust and excitement, showcase customer experiences and compel buying action. 

Built exclusively for Shopify, this app offers extensive customization tools, top-notch customer support, strategy guidance, and account optimization to outperform your competitors. 

Use Okendo to capture high-impact customer reviews and showcase them on your site, helping you build trust and drive conversions. 

6 | Checkout Zen 

 

Checkout Zen is our very own (5-star rated) cart analytics app Shopify merchants use to find new revenue opportunities. It’s a bit like Credit Karma, but for eCommerce experiences. 

Just installing Checkout Zen gives you instant insights about why visitors don’t buy from you and where to make strategic improvements. This is Google Analytics on steroids. 

Here’s what users have to say about the app: 

“You may have obsessed over getting more traffic, improving your conversion rate or add to cart rate. If so, great. But what about the people leaving your checkout? What happens if your checkout completion rate goes up from 70% to 80%? Answer: You make A LOT more money, and your whole business becomes more profitable. Your ads become a lot more competitive too. And all this from just fixing a few pages in your checkout you previously thought where good enough.” – Hyttefeber 

“Phenomenal app! The value of the data that this app produces has already helped our business become more efficient, created more revenue, and helped our customers better navigate our site. I highly recommend.” – Genius One, Inc. 

With a quick, effortless checkout audit, you’ll know exactly where you stand on engagement, cart abandonment, and conversion rate. After being armed with not just data but actionable insights, you can immediately begin to improve your funnel and boost sales. 

Your Checkout UX is probably costing you money – fix it today 

Focusing on checkout experiences is a bit new for eCommerce, and it may seem a bit overwhelming, but there are a few sure-fire ways to make progress fast.  

• Know what’s going on – run a full analysis of your site performance 

• Copywriting is huge – make the most of every word. 

• Stories sell – use new social tools and content apps to engage users better 

• Payments seal the deal – how do your buyers like to pay? Make it easier for them. 

• Social proof builds trust – share your customers’ success with everyone 

• Data is just the beginning – use an app that generates insights for you 

There is plenty of new tech emerging to help merchants adapt to the rapidly growing world of online shopping. This is far from an exhaustive list – stay tuned for more soon.